This was my first blog, hosted by Yahoo, to my regret. I wish I had started it here on Blogger.
Anyway, I salvaged what I could from Yahoo & put it in here. Yahoo doesn't offer an export tool, nor does Blogger offer a good import tool, so this is a mishmash that was partially exported to Multiply and partly cut/pasted from Yahoo.
This is here for the history, I guess.
My new (Main) blog is here.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
13
 | MOVING!! | for everyone |
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| HOM: Jeepers! OMG! | for everyone |
I figured that I would make the most of that autumn and tried to cram as much hunting, fishing & playing into it as I could.
My first purchase for the Jeep was a set of the most agressive tires Cenex was able to stuff under the fenders and the Jeep could handle with its 4.11 gearing and positrac. Like I said, I had plans...
The late 60's and early 70's were the heyday of 4x4 travel here, with tons of roads and trails, no restrictions and not too many people. I did my best to get the Jeep to the end of every trail I could find, and usually succeeded. The failures were a little worrisome though.
Gordon & I went up Peter's Ridge on a snowy trail and all went well till we hit a spot where the trail tilted sideways onto a steepish slope that ended in a gully. When I decided to give it a try, the crew mutinied. Gordon put his foot down and wouldn't let me go any further.
Okay. No problem. We backed out and went elsewhere.
O f course, the next day I went back up there with Paul, tried making it over the tilted portion of the trail - over Paul's objections - and failed. I ended up with the Jeep 1/3 of the way down the slope and sliding sideways towards the gully. Couldn't go forward, couldn't go backwards, finally got stopped.
Paul got out, grabbed his rifle, told me to have fun and went hunting. I got out the come-along and ropes and spent the next hour getting my poor rig back up to level ground.
Gordon called that night and asked if I had gone back to the bad spot - said he had a feeling I would. He also said "I told you so."
Gordon was with me up on Pioneer ridge when the snow had melted a bit. The road was mostly bare gravel till we rounded a bend and found a 30 or 40 foot wide sheet of ice on the road where the melt had run across it and then frozen. Yep, the road slanted toward the outside edge, the sidehill was steep, and I was dumb. I didn't give Gordon a chance to object - I just hit the gas and went for it - and made it, though the back of the jeep got closer to the drop than the front did. I hit the dry ground at the far side with the Jeep going sideways at about a 45 degree angle.
Gordon let me know how stupid that was, but I will never forget the look on his face when the road dead-ended a little ways on and we had to go back over the same icy patch.
He was with me up near Rogers Lake when I tackled a bog. The road went into it, disappeared for fifty yards or so and then reappeared on the far side. I got a run at it and was probably doing 70 when we hit the goop. We made it across, but the I spent the next half hour drying out the ignition system so I could start the Jeep again while I listened to Gordon laugh at me. The engine had drowned out and only momentum got us through.
(My biggest gripe on the rig was the distributor - it was on the side of the engine near the bottom and was constantly shorting out when I went through puddles too enthusiastically. I eventually made a rubber boot to protect it and that helped.)
I didn't have any close calls when Donal was with me, he kept me on a pretty tight rein. I did forget once to put the gas cap on and got water in the tank when I was out at Thompson River with him. Seemed like it took forever to pop and bang our way back into town...
Gordon got a bit peevish with me when I put a leaky five gallon can of gas behind the seat. That time I did listen to him and moved it to the bumper.
Dad & Gordon & I went over to Townsend hunting for a few days. Exploring the roads, we came to another of those infuriating dead ends. When I complained about going in reverse the mile or so back to the last spot wide enough to turn around, Dad pointed over the bank at the edge of the road and said "Oh, just back over the edge and then drive back on to the road."
I did. Barely. Thank God for 4x4 and knobby tires and low gears and a touch of Divine Intervention, otherwise we'd still be there. Apparently I took Dad seriously when I shouldn't have.
The Jeep was a little squirrelly if you were driving on ice in 2wd, I guess because of the positrac axle. Dad & I were way down the Swan on a good gravel road when when a gentle bend led into an icy hairpin curve. When I saw it, I told him to hang on, we weren't gonna make it...
I tried to power-slide the corner and we made it about 3/4 of the way around when the rear end dropped off the edge.
We slammed to a stop with the rear bumper embedded in the far bank of the ditch, the front bumper hanging on the egde of the road and all four tires in the air. I had to dig a hole under the front bumper (Shovel - the #2 purchase for the Jeep) so I could get the Handyman Jack (#3 purchase) under it and lift.
Cool procedure, jack it as high as it will go, push the jack over to shove the rig sideways, rinse, repeat, until all four wheels are on the ground again ...
In the meantime Dad visited with some folks that stopped to watch the show. When I finally got out, a quick check showed that the only damage was to my ego.
Years later I did the same thing in my driveway, with the bumpers on the ice berms from the plow and the tires in the air. Going too fast on ice, hit a bump - I never learn...
TBC
(Me) (Home) (My Photos)
My first purchase for the Jeep was a set of the most agressive tires Cenex was able to stuff under the fenders and the Jeep could handle with its 4.11 gearing and positrac. Like I said, I had plans...
The late 60's and early 70's were the heyday of 4x4 travel here, with tons of roads and trails, no restrictions and not too many people. I did my best to get the Jeep to the end of every trail I could find, and usually succeeded. The failures were a little worrisome though.
Gordon & I went up Peter's Ridge on a snowy trail and all went well till we hit a spot where the trail tilted sideways onto a steepish slope that ended in a gully. When I decided to give it a try, the crew mutinied. Gordon put his foot down and wouldn't let me go any further.
Okay. No problem. We backed out and went elsewhere.
O f course, the next day I went back up there with Paul, tried making it over the tilted portion of the trail - over Paul's objections - and failed. I ended up with the Jeep 1/3 of the way down the slope and sliding sideways towards the gully. Couldn't go forward, couldn't go backwards, finally got stopped.
Paul got out, grabbed his rifle, told me to have fun and went hunting. I got out the come-along and ropes and spent the next hour getting my poor rig back up to level ground.
Gordon called that night and asked if I had gone back to the bad spot - said he had a feeling I would. He also said "I told you so."
Gordon was with me up on Pioneer ridge when the snow had melted a bit. The road was mostly bare gravel till we rounded a bend and found a 30 or 40 foot wide sheet of ice on the road where the melt had run across it and then frozen. Yep, the road slanted toward the outside edge, the sidehill was steep, and I was dumb. I didn't give Gordon a chance to object - I just hit the gas and went for it - and made it, though the back of the jeep got closer to the drop than the front did. I hit the dry ground at the far side with the Jeep going sideways at about a 45 degree angle.
Gordon let me know how stupid that was, but I will never forget the look on his face when the road dead-ended a little ways on and we had to go back over the same icy patch.
He was with me up near Rogers Lake when I tackled a bog. The road went into it, disappeared for fifty yards or so and then reappeared on the far side. I got a run at it and was probably doing 70 when we hit the goop. We made it across, but the I spent the next half hour drying out the ignition system so I could start the Jeep again while I listened to Gordon laugh at me. The engine had drowned out and only momentum got us through.
(My biggest gripe on the rig was the distributor - it was on the side of the engine near the bottom and was constantly shorting out when I went through puddles too enthusiastically. I eventually made a rubber boot to protect it and that helped.)
I didn't have any close calls when Donal was with me, he kept me on a pretty tight rein. I did forget once to put the gas cap on and got water in the tank when I was out at Thompson River with him. Seemed like it took forever to pop and bang our way back into town...
Gordon got a bit peevish with me when I put a leaky five gallon can of gas behind the seat. That time I did listen to him and moved it to the bumper.
Dad & Gordon & I went over to Townsend hunting for a few days. Exploring the roads, we came to another of those infuriating dead ends. When I complained about going in reverse the mile or so back to the last spot wide enough to turn around, Dad pointed over the bank at the edge of the road and said "Oh, just back over the edge and then drive back on to the road."
I did. Barely. Thank God for 4x4 and knobby tires and low gears and a touch of Divine Intervention, otherwise we'd still be there. Apparently I took Dad seriously when I shouldn't have.
The Jeep was a little squirrelly if you were driving on ice in 2wd, I guess because of the positrac axle. Dad & I were way down the Swan on a good gravel road when when a gentle bend led into an icy hairpin curve. When I saw it, I told him to hang on, we weren't gonna make it...
I tried to power-slide the corner and we made it about 3/4 of the way around when the rear end dropped off the edge.
We slammed to a stop with the rear bumper embedded in the far bank of the ditch, the front bumper hanging on the egde of the road and all four tires in the air. I had to dig a hole under the front bumper (Shovel - the #2 purchase for the Jeep) so I could get the Handyman Jack (#3 purchase) under it and lift.
Cool procedure, jack it as high as it will go, push the jack over to shove the rig sideways, rinse, repeat, until all four wheels are on the ground again ...
In the meantime Dad visited with some folks that stopped to watch the show. When I finally got out, a quick check showed that the only damage was to my ego.
Years later I did the same thing in my driveway, with the bumpers on the ice berms from the plow and the tires in the air. Going too fast on ice, hit a bump - I never learn...
TBC
(Me) (Home) (My Photos)
| HOM: Jeepers! | for everyone |
Part one:
(Stock photo)
The next thing on my agenda was a trip to Missoula with Dad & Gordon in search of a used Jeep since we couldn't find a good deal on one in Kalispell.
A Wagoneer was my dream machine, the first real SUV, go-anywhere guts and a comfy ride for four people, roomy enough to sleep in and heavy-duty enough to haul anything I owned. The new ones had V-8 engines and automatic transmissions and high price tags. I wanted one with a manual transmission and a low price tag.
We found one in Missoula, a blue '64, like new, with a six cylinder 230 c. i. OHC, three-on-the-tree, two-speed transfer case, roof rack and trailer hitch. We had driven down in my little Falcon: we drove the Jeep home. The Falcon was gone.
When we got to Somers, I took a detour and went back in by the old dump to play with the 4x4 a bit. After a while, I made one of those decisions that made perfect sense to me and made everyone else decide I was insane - I deliberately aimed the rig between two trees and put full length scratches down the pristine sides of the Wagon. Dad & Gordon were pretty outspoken about my stupidity, but I did explain that I wanted the Jeep for playing in the woods, and if I had to worry about scratching it, I wouldn't enjoy it. Now I could relax.
Gordon kept everything he owned in immaculate condition, and Dad was careful of his stuff too, so I am not sure either of them really understood, but when you have a reputation for craziness/stupidity, you have to defend it...
I wish I still had this old rig - it had a ton of happy memories riding on its sagging springs. I think that i am going to drop any semblance of chronology and just tell "Jeep" tales for a while. If I could recall all the good and fun times I had in it, it would probably fill a book.
TBC
(Me) (Home) (My Photos)
(Stock photo)
The next thing on my agenda was a trip to Missoula with Dad & Gordon in search of a used Jeep since we couldn't find a good deal on one in Kalispell.
A Wagoneer was my dream machine, the first real SUV, go-anywhere guts and a comfy ride for four people, roomy enough to sleep in and heavy-duty enough to haul anything I owned. The new ones had V-8 engines and automatic transmissions and high price tags. I wanted one with a manual transmission and a low price tag.
We found one in Missoula, a blue '64, like new, with a six cylinder 230 c. i. OHC, three-on-the-tree, two-speed transfer case, roof rack and trailer hitch. We had driven down in my little Falcon: we drove the Jeep home. The Falcon was gone.
When we got to Somers, I took a detour and went back in by the old dump to play with the 4x4 a bit. After a while, I made one of those decisions that made perfect sense to me and made everyone else decide I was insane - I deliberately aimed the rig between two trees and put full length scratches down the pristine sides of the Wagon. Dad & Gordon were pretty outspoken about my stupidity, but I did explain that I wanted the Jeep for playing in the woods, and if I had to worry about scratching it, I wouldn't enjoy it. Now I could relax.
Gordon kept everything he owned in immaculate condition, and Dad was careful of his stuff too, so I am not sure either of them really understood, but when you have a reputation for craziness/stupidity, you have to defend it...
I wish I still had this old rig - it had a ton of happy memories riding on its sagging springs. I think that i am going to drop any semblance of chronology and just tell "Jeep" tales for a while. If I could recall all the good and fun times I had in it, it would probably fill a book.
TBC
(Me) (Home) (My Photos)
| Desk Reading | for everyone |
Currently:
by Rachel Caine
From Booklist:
Joanne Baldwin is a weather warden, who can control the weather and keep it from being more chaotic and destructive than it already is. She is on the run, though, for she is accused of killing a senior warden, which she did, sort of: a thread of corruption runs through some of the most powerful wardens, one of which put a Demon Mark on her and then died. Her only hope now is to get a djinn from her old friend Lewis, who stole three of them^B from the council of the wardens many years ago. As she runs, she picks up a hitchhiker who knows things an ordinary person wouldn't, and who offers help. With djinns and other wardens, including those sent to arrest her, all giving her conflicting information, Joanne never quite knows whom to trust in this romantic escapist romp rife with danger, excitement, and even classic cars. Regina Schroeder
--------
I read the first five in the series last year, got sidetracked, and now working my through book 6 and then on to book 7. Good series, almost as good as Simon Green's stuff. A female protagonist/female author that even this old Misogynist likes!
(Me) (Home) (My Photos)
by Rachel Caine
From Booklist:
Joanne Baldwin is a weather warden, who can control the weather and keep it from being more chaotic and destructive than it already is. She is on the run, though, for she is accused of killing a senior warden, which she did, sort of: a thread of corruption runs through some of the most powerful wardens, one of which put a Demon Mark on her and then died. Her only hope now is to get a djinn from her old friend Lewis, who stole three of them^B from the council of the wardens many years ago. As she runs, she picks up a hitchhiker who knows things an ordinary person wouldn't, and who offers help. With djinns and other wardens, including those sent to arrest her, all giving her conflicting information, Joanne never quite knows whom to trust in this romantic escapist romp rife with danger, excitement, and even classic cars. Regina Schroeder
--------
I read the first five in the series last year, got sidetracked, and now working my through book 6 and then on to book 7. Good series, almost as good as Simon Green's stuff. A female protagonist/female author that even this old Misogynist likes!
(Me) (Home) (My Photos)
| HOM: 1967 - Rain & Change | for everyone |
Like the old saw states, all good things must come to an end.
Rain ended my time at Ford. The woods were damp enough to lower the fire danger and life was returning to normal, but the free time and solitude had given me a chance to figure out a few things and get a course of action.
I quit the Forest Service - the normal thing for college students at the end of summer - and on a bright September day signed my name on the line at the USN Recruiter's office for a 120 day deferred enlistment.
I broke the news to the folks at supper, and I suppose to the rest of the neighborhood at the same time since Mom had cooked for the harvest crew and they were all there.
When the news that I was leaving spread, I suspect there were some happy faces.
..........
It had taken me a while to decide what to do. Enlistment was a big step. I rationalized it by saying that if I enlisted I could chose my own branch, but I really did it because I needed to.
Needed to? Why serve at all when I didn't need to? Good questions. I wish I knew the answers.
I guess I was responding to something that had been ingrained in me all my life, a mix of patriotism and, though I didn't realize it at the time, the need for a rite of passage. I had enough baggage, I didn't want to echo Vic's note of regret the rest of my life. I wanted to go, and do, and maybe I had to prove something to myself.
Why Navy? I suppose it was because Dad had been a sailor, though fear of heights kind of ruled out the Air Force, lack of Gung Ho ruled out the Marines and laziness & cowardice ruled out the Army. I liked boats and swimming, the Navy had some of the best training, and it offered a chance to travel and see the world, or so the posters said.
Heh - "See the world!" One of my fellow sufferers in boot camp enlisted for the chance to travel the oceans - and spent the next four years at the Naval Air Station in Fallon, Nevada. It didn't take me long long to learn to take ANYTHING I was told with a grain of salt.
TBC
(Me) (Home) (My Photos)
Rain ended my time at Ford. The woods were damp enough to lower the fire danger and life was returning to normal, but the free time and solitude had given me a chance to figure out a few things and get a course of action.
I quit the Forest Service - the normal thing for college students at the end of summer - and on a bright September day signed my name on the line at the USN Recruiter's office for a 120 day deferred enlistment.
I broke the news to the folks at supper, and I suppose to the rest of the neighborhood at the same time since Mom had cooked for the harvest crew and they were all there.
When the news that I was leaving spread, I suspect there were some happy faces.
..........
It had taken me a while to decide what to do. Enlistment was a big step. I rationalized it by saying that if I enlisted I could chose my own branch, but I really did it because I needed to.
Needed to? Why serve at all when I didn't need to? Good questions. I wish I knew the answers.
I guess I was responding to something that had been ingrained in me all my life, a mix of patriotism and, though I didn't realize it at the time, the need for a rite of passage. I had enough baggage, I didn't want to echo Vic's note of regret the rest of my life. I wanted to go, and do, and maybe I had to prove something to myself.
Why Navy? I suppose it was because Dad had been a sailor, though fear of heights kind of ruled out the Air Force, lack of Gung Ho ruled out the Marines and laziness & cowardice ruled out the Army. I liked boats and swimming, the Navy had some of the best training, and it offered a chance to travel and see the world, or so the posters said.
Heh - "See the world!" One of my fellow sufferers in boot camp enlisted for the chance to travel the oceans - and spent the next four years at the Naval Air Station in Fallon, Nevada. It didn't take me long long to learn to take ANYTHING I was told with a grain of salt.
TBC
(Me) (Home) (My Photos)
| Hom: 1967 - Ford 2 | for everyone |
Mixed memories.
The pistol Mom sent up was my old High Standard Supermatic Citation target pistol. I did a lot of plinking and practicing with it. I even got a grayling out of the creek in the back yard with it, after I trial-and-errored the deflection and scored a head shot. It was the basic ingredient of an excellent supper.
While I was still soloing, I got a call from Jim Hutchens, my erstwhile boss, telling me he was coming up the next day for a visit. This was okay with me, but he threw in a kicker - he wanted either fresh cake or cookies waiting for him. When I told him I couldn't bake, he said I better learn because my job depended on it.
I had around 24 hours to learn, so I started in. I wasted a lot of ingredients battling that old gas range and my incompetence and my mistakes all went out in the woods. Mistakes like forgetting to put the flour in the cookie mix...
I did one cake, & I wouldn't be totally shocked to find out it was still in the back yard up there, mislabeled as a meteorite. It was so hard and so gross the mice & chipmunks wouldn't even sniff it. I decided cakes took too much stuff and too long to bake and I didn't have time to play with them any more.
I concentrated on cookies, and finally a batch came out that was basically edible. They were on the table when Jim walked in, along with a fresh pot of coffee. Everything met his approval.
We had quite a visit and put together a bit of mutual history - my Handcock grandparents had purchased their farm from his Jackman grandparents. Then Jim sniffed out the fact that my Mom was a Streit and a sister to Bill & Rudy, who he knew - and then he realized I was Pat Taylor's nephew.
I told him I thought he knew that already, and that was why I had been handed such a cushy job, and after he got done snorting coffee all over he told me I'd have been out cleaning outhouses or some similar scutwork if he'd known in time.
Jim was a great guy, and became a good friend. He became a school bus driver after he left the Forest Service and died a few years back.
TBC
(Me) (Home)
The pistol Mom sent up was my old High Standard Supermatic Citation target pistol. I did a lot of plinking and practicing with it. I even got a grayling out of the creek in the back yard with it, after I trial-and-errored the deflection and scored a head shot. It was the basic ingredient of an excellent supper.
While I was still soloing, I got a call from Jim Hutchens, my erstwhile boss, telling me he was coming up the next day for a visit. This was okay with me, but he threw in a kicker - he wanted either fresh cake or cookies waiting for him. When I told him I couldn't bake, he said I better learn because my job depended on it.
I had around 24 hours to learn, so I started in. I wasted a lot of ingredients battling that old gas range and my incompetence and my mistakes all went out in the woods. Mistakes like forgetting to put the flour in the cookie mix...
I did one cake, & I wouldn't be totally shocked to find out it was still in the back yard up there, mislabeled as a meteorite. It was so hard and so gross the mice & chipmunks wouldn't even sniff it. I decided cakes took too much stuff and too long to bake and I didn't have time to play with them any more.
I concentrated on cookies, and finally a batch came out that was basically edible. They were on the table when Jim walked in, along with a fresh pot of coffee. Everything met his approval.
We had quite a visit and put together a bit of mutual history - my Handcock grandparents had purchased their farm from his Jackman grandparents. Then Jim sniffed out the fact that my Mom was a Streit and a sister to Bill & Rudy, who he knew - and then he realized I was Pat Taylor's nephew.
I told him I thought he knew that already, and that was why I had been handed such a cushy job, and after he got done snorting coffee all over he told me I'd have been out cleaning outhouses or some similar scutwork if he'd known in time.
Jim was a great guy, and became a good friend. He became a school bus driver after he left the Forest Service and died a few years back.
TBC
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(Me) (Home)
| HOM: 1967 - Ford 1 | for everyone |
Life at Ford was pretty idyllic, though the solitude didn't last too long.
The woods were closed, but some idiots still tried sneaking in to hunt or whatever, so Jack Brown and a few other FS guys started patrolling the roads, watching for fires and chasing non-NF-residents out. Jack took the north end, so he & his helper started bunking at Ford.
Jack always hassled me over the coffee I made, calling it dishwater weak, so I made a special pot for him one morning - 1/2 the water, double the grounds, Tabasco added and the whole mess boiled down to mud.
He loved it...
Jack was there for one of my more "Jim" moments. One evening one of the old NF ranchers stopped by Ford and visited with Jack for a couple of hours while his helper & I played cards. Since we had company the generator was running and all the inside lights and the yard light were on and it was pretty cheery there.
Jack was everybody's friend, so this visit wasn't unusual.
Eventually too much liquid intake caught up with me and I headed outside. Now, farmers, lumberjacks, foresters and most folks who work in outdoor solitude are a lot like dogs - pretty casual about where they relieve themselves. I was no different - rather than go the 50 yards to the outhouse I just walked over to the fence in front of the rigs and, uh, went, and then went back in and resumed the game.
An hour or so later, the old rancher bestirred himself and left, with the remark "I guess I better get going - the old lady is waiting out in the truck." The truck I had been standing in front of...
I wish I could remember the name of the the kid I was playing cards with... Oh well. Anyway, he saw the look on my face and asked what was wrong. When I told him he went hysterical, thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard, and then it caught my funny bone. Jack walked back in, took one look at us and asked what the joke was - we wouldn't tell him until he threatened violence, then he cracked up too.
40 years later & I still can't believe a woman existed that would have put up with those hours alone in that chilly truck...
TBC
(Me) (Home)
The woods were closed, but some idiots still tried sneaking in to hunt or whatever, so Jack Brown and a few other FS guys started patrolling the roads, watching for fires and chasing non-NF-residents out. Jack took the north end, so he & his helper started bunking at Ford.
Jack always hassled me over the coffee I made, calling it dishwater weak, so I made a special pot for him one morning - 1/2 the water, double the grounds, Tabasco added and the whole mess boiled down to mud.
He loved it...
Jack was there for one of my more "Jim" moments. One evening one of the old NF ranchers stopped by Ford and visited with Jack for a couple of hours while his helper & I played cards. Since we had company the generator was running and all the inside lights and the yard light were on and it was pretty cheery there.
Jack was everybody's friend, so this visit wasn't unusual.
Eventually too much liquid intake caught up with me and I headed outside. Now, farmers, lumberjacks, foresters and most folks who work in outdoor solitude are a lot like dogs - pretty casual about where they relieve themselves. I was no different - rather than go the 50 yards to the outhouse I just walked over to the fence in front of the rigs and, uh, went, and then went back in and resumed the game.
An hour or so later, the old rancher bestirred himself and left, with the remark "I guess I better get going - the old lady is waiting out in the truck." The truck I had been standing in front of...
I wish I could remember the name of the the kid I was playing cards with... Oh well. Anyway, he saw the look on my face and asked what was wrong. When I told him he went hysterical, thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard, and then it caught my funny bone. Jack walked back in, took one look at us and asked what the joke was - we wouldn't tell him until he threatened violence, then he cracked up too.
40 years later & I still can't believe a woman existed that would have put up with those hours alone in that chilly truck...
TBC
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(Me) (Home)
| HOM: 1967 - The Summer Of Love. Finale. | for everyone |
I was in Butte when the Huckleberry Fire blew up that last time. The last thing I saw of Big Creek out the back window of the FS pickup I hitched a ride in was a retardant bomber working the edge of the campground.
It was a free trip - an "all expenses paid" bus ride by Uncle Sam. Free entertainment too, watching lines of naked guys standing at attention waiting for a medic to put them into the humiliating routine of bend, spread, cough, etc.
Yeah, it was a pre-induction physical, the prelude to the Draft telling you exactly how your days were numbered. And yeah, I passed, flat feet, bad eyes and all. Guys that didn't pass wore a mixture of expressions, usually a mix of relief and shame. Faces of the passing specimens showed anything from from fear to pride to ... nothing? I suspect my face was thoughtful, because I had a decision to make.
When I got back to Big Creek the fire was basically out and mopping up was going on. Just north of Big Creek a ways the river takes a right turn and cuts through the line of ridges that the fire was running on. The river, the road, some luck and a lot of hard work stopped the fire at the river. Had it made it across the break it probably would have run north till snow put it out.
The camp ground was left in ashes, the crews had gone to other fires, the woods were closed to all but residents and USFS personnel and my thinning crew was scattered all over the district.
There wasn't much debate as to where I was going when I got back. As soon as he saw me, Jim Hutchens walked up and asked if I could cook. When I told him no, he said I was gonna get pretty hungry if I didn't learn...
A few hours later I found myself alone at Ford station, with orders to stay within earshot of the phone & radio in the little cabin. My job was to act as a relay - two lookouts could only reach Ford to send and get messages - one only by radio, one only by telephone. One of the lookouts was in the park, one on our side of the river. One was Numa, I think the other was Cyclone. Maybe Larry can confirm the name of the other. (EDIT: It was Hornet Lookout. Thank you, Larry.)
I had to field their daily reports and any emergency messages and pass them on to Big Creek over the phone, and also pass Big Creek's messages back to the lookouts. They could not talk directly. (By "phone", I mean one of those old wooden 1920's hang-on-the-wall, turn a crank and yell alot contraptions.)
In some ways it was paradise - a neat little cabin in a beautiful part of the country, a stream stocked with grayling literally by the back door, deer in the meadow, Mother Nature at her most charming.
Learning to cook wasn't a big deal - they gave me a Lookout's Cookbook, the gas range & freezer worked fine, the pantry was well stocked, and I had a frying pan.
I have never minded being alone, so that was okay. I have rarely had problem with boredom, so no big deal there.
But . . . THERE WERE NO BOOKS!!!!
I read the cookbook, a chainsaw operator's manual, a couple of pamphlets, the backs of all the cereal boxes and the labels of most of the cans. I'd never been without books before, and it was awful!
I slipped a message out to Uncle Pat, and a few days later he showed up with my packsack. He'd talked to Mom and she'd grabbed my pack, took it in my room and filled it with books. Covering a knife. And a pistol and a couple of boxes of ammo. When Pat got the pack from her and delivered it, my Holiday in Paradise commenced!
TBC
(Me) (Home)
It was a free trip - an "all expenses paid" bus ride by Uncle Sam. Free entertainment too, watching lines of naked guys standing at attention waiting for a medic to put them into the humiliating routine of bend, spread, cough, etc.
Yeah, it was a pre-induction physical, the prelude to the Draft telling you exactly how your days were numbered. And yeah, I passed, flat feet, bad eyes and all. Guys that didn't pass wore a mixture of expressions, usually a mix of relief and shame. Faces of the passing specimens showed anything from from fear to pride to ... nothing? I suspect my face was thoughtful, because I had a decision to make.
When I got back to Big Creek the fire was basically out and mopping up was going on. Just north of Big Creek a ways the river takes a right turn and cuts through the line of ridges that the fire was running on. The river, the road, some luck and a lot of hard work stopped the fire at the river. Had it made it across the break it probably would have run north till snow put it out.
The camp ground was left in ashes, the crews had gone to other fires, the woods were closed to all but residents and USFS personnel and my thinning crew was scattered all over the district.
There wasn't much debate as to where I was going when I got back. As soon as he saw me, Jim Hutchens walked up and asked if I could cook. When I told him no, he said I was gonna get pretty hungry if I didn't learn...
A few hours later I found myself alone at Ford station, with orders to stay within earshot of the phone & radio in the little cabin. My job was to act as a relay - two lookouts could only reach Ford to send and get messages - one only by radio, one only by telephone. One of the lookouts was in the park, one on our side of the river. One was Numa, I think the other was Cyclone. Maybe Larry can confirm the name of the other. (EDIT: It was Hornet Lookout. Thank you, Larry.)
I had to field their daily reports and any emergency messages and pass them on to Big Creek over the phone, and also pass Big Creek's messages back to the lookouts. They could not talk directly. (By "phone", I mean one of those old wooden 1920's hang-on-the-wall, turn a crank and yell alot contraptions.)
In some ways it was paradise - a neat little cabin in a beautiful part of the country, a stream stocked with grayling literally by the back door, deer in the meadow, Mother Nature at her most charming.
Learning to cook wasn't a big deal - they gave me a Lookout's Cookbook, the gas range & freezer worked fine, the pantry was well stocked, and I had a frying pan.
I have never minded being alone, so that was okay. I have rarely had problem with boredom, so no big deal there.
But . . . THERE WERE NO BOOKS!!!!
I read the cookbook, a chainsaw operator's manual, a couple of pamphlets, the backs of all the cereal boxes and the labels of most of the cans. I'd never been without books before, and it was awful!
I slipped a message out to Uncle Pat, and a few days later he showed up with my packsack. He'd talked to Mom and she'd grabbed my pack, took it in my room and filled it with books. Covering a knife. And a pistol and a couple of boxes of ammo. When Pat got the pack from her and delivered it, my Holiday in Paradise commenced!
TBC
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(Me) (Home)
| From Larry O. | for everyone |
Larry is a great Contributing editor:
----------------
I just got done reading your story on the Huckleberry fire and about those Indians in the fire camp. That same thing occurred in 1961 when I was down on The Salmon River on the Corn Creek fire.
We had our fire camp at Lantz Bar then and there were two different tribes of Indians there in the same camp. During the shifts, they always left a couple of great big-and I mean BIG Indians guarding their areas. Those fellows sat on their behinds with their arms folded across their sumptuous bellys watching each other all day long.
I was the radio operator there and got to watch all this malarkey.
Everything went pretty good until one afternoon one of the young bucks got a big water snake that was all covered with wet sand and did look like a Rattlesnake as there were lots and lots of them critters down there. He let out a loud yahoo and tossed that snake into the other tribe's area. You never saw a bunch of Indians move so fast.
That kid was really laffing it up until he got caught and it took the Camp Boss and several other "White Eyes" to break that up as that kid could have been severely beaten up. Anyway, that kid got shipped out damn quick.
A note in passing, that fire was the first one that I got to ride down the Salmon River in a Jet Boat. Man, what an experience. That was how all the fire fighters got down to the fire then. The only other way was by trail which had lots of buzz tails on it all the way so little ol' me was glad to go by boat.
Just thought that you might like to know that different tribes don't mix well in close quarters.
----------------
I just got done reading your story on the Huckleberry fire and about those Indians in the fire camp. That same thing occurred in 1961 when I was down on The Salmon River on the Corn Creek fire.
We had our fire camp at Lantz Bar then and there were two different tribes of Indians there in the same camp. During the shifts, they always left a couple of great big-and I mean BIG Indians guarding their areas. Those fellows sat on their behinds with their arms folded across their sumptuous bellys watching each other all day long.
I was the radio operator there and got to watch all this malarkey.
Everything went pretty good until one afternoon one of the young bucks got a big water snake that was all covered with wet sand and did look like a Rattlesnake as there were lots and lots of them critters down there. He let out a loud yahoo and tossed that snake into the other tribe's area. You never saw a bunch of Indians move so fast.
That kid was really laffing it up until he got caught and it took the Camp Boss and several other "White Eyes" to break that up as that kid could have been severely beaten up. Anyway, that kid got shipped out damn quick.
A note in passing, that fire was the first one that I got to ride down the Salmon River in a Jet Boat. Man, what an experience. That was how all the fire fighters got down to the fire then. The only other way was by trail which had lots of buzz tails on it all the way so little ol' me was glad to go by boat.
Just thought that you might like to know that different tribes don't mix well in close quarters.
| On My Desk: | for everyone |
Finished with Askins, time for a change of pace.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Charles Fat Charlie Nancy leads a normal, boring existence in London. However, when he calls the U.S. to invite his estranged father to his wedding, he learns that the man just died. After jetting off to Florida for the funeral, Charlie not only discovers a brother he didn't know he had, but also learns that his father was the West African trickster god, Anansi. Charlie's brother, who possesses his own magical powers, later visits him at home and spins Charlie's life out of control, getting him fired, sleeping with his fiancée, and even getting him arrested for a white-collar crime. Charlie fights back with assistance from other gods, and that's when the real trouble begins. They lead the brothers into adventures that are at times scary or downright hysterical. At first Charlie is overwhelmed by this new world, but he is Anansi's son and shows just as much flair for trickery as his brother. With its quirky, inventive fantasy, this is a real treat for Gaiman's fans. Here, he writes with a fuller sense of character. Focusing on a smaller cast gives him the room to breathe life into these figures. Anansi is also a story about fathers, sons, and brothers and how difficult it can be to get along even when they are so similar. Darkly funny and heartwarming to the end, this book is an addictive read not easily forgotten.–Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
(Me) (Home)
Anansi Boys (Hardcover)
by Neil Gaiman (Author)From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Charles Fat Charlie Nancy leads a normal, boring existence in London. However, when he calls the U.S. to invite his estranged father to his wedding, he learns that the man just died. After jetting off to Florida for the funeral, Charlie not only discovers a brother he didn't know he had, but also learns that his father was the West African trickster god, Anansi. Charlie's brother, who possesses his own magical powers, later visits him at home and spins Charlie's life out of control, getting him fired, sleeping with his fiancée, and even getting him arrested for a white-collar crime. Charlie fights back with assistance from other gods, and that's when the real trouble begins. They lead the brothers into adventures that are at times scary or downright hysterical. At first Charlie is overwhelmed by this new world, but he is Anansi's son and shows just as much flair for trickery as his brother. With its quirky, inventive fantasy, this is a real treat for Gaiman's fans. Here, he writes with a fuller sense of character. Focusing on a smaller cast gives him the room to breathe life into these figures. Anansi is also a story about fathers, sons, and brothers and how difficult it can be to get along even when they are so similar. Darkly funny and heartwarming to the end, this book is an addictive read not easily forgotten.–Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
(Me) (Home)
| HOM: 1967 Intermezzo. | for everyone |
At the moment the well of college memories is pumped out; Time to dig into fresh ground.
1967: The summer of fire and change.
By then, Viet Nam was the hot topic in the under-30 age group and in the news. Several good friends had died there, I'd heard horror stories from a couple of returnees, and the Draft was hot on the heels of others I knew.
Potential draftees: a few of them headed for Canada, others got married - and a favorite quip from recruiters touting service over marriage was "Better four years than life!" A few enlisted.
I was 21 and in school and getting passing grades so I felt safe, but in the middle of the summer I got a letter from the government changing my classification from 2S (Student) to 1A (Cannon fodder). I called NNC and found out that they had sent in the wrong form confirming my standing as a student. "No sweat", they said, "Easily corrected!"
I figured I was truly off the hook, but I wasn't sure if I was really glad or not. I grew up around WWII vets, reading G.I. Joe & Sgt. Rock comics and playing war games. I had Heroes: The Sullivans. Alvin York. Audie Murphy.
I remembered Dad & Darrel, Gordon, Herb Hegg, Uncle Paul, Charley Taborski and other WWII Vets and the unspoken but always present "I was there" cachet they had. This cachet, this bond, was even stronger among the Vets who had actually been in combat.
I remembered Vic telling me of the war years, and his lifetime regret that, sidelined by a heart murmur, he could not go and serve with the rest of the "boys".
I told the school to not bother.
I didn't tell the folks my decision.
TBC
(Me) (Home)
1967: The summer of fire and change.
By then, Viet Nam was the hot topic in the under-30 age group and in the news. Several good friends had died there, I'd heard horror stories from a couple of returnees, and the Draft was hot on the heels of others I knew.
Potential draftees: a few of them headed for Canada, others got married - and a favorite quip from recruiters touting service over marriage was "Better four years than life!" A few enlisted.
I was 21 and in school and getting passing grades so I felt safe, but in the middle of the summer I got a letter from the government changing my classification from 2S (Student) to 1A (Cannon fodder). I called NNC and found out that they had sent in the wrong form confirming my standing as a student. "No sweat", they said, "Easily corrected!"
I figured I was truly off the hook, but I wasn't sure if I was really glad or not. I grew up around WWII vets, reading G.I. Joe & Sgt. Rock comics and playing war games. I had Heroes: The Sullivans. Alvin York. Audie Murphy.
I remembered Dad & Darrel, Gordon, Herb Hegg, Uncle Paul, Charley Taborski and other WWII Vets and the unspoken but always present "I was there" cachet they had. This cachet, this bond, was even stronger among the Vets who had actually been in combat.
I remembered Vic telling me of the war years, and his lifetime regret that, sidelined by a heart murmur, he could not go and serve with the rest of the "boys".
I told the school to not bother.
I didn't tell the folks my decision.
TBC
(Me) (Home)
| HOM: 1967 - The Summer Of Love. Not. Part II. | for everyone |
I didn't mind being off the fireline - running the radio was more interesting. Being on the fireline is like being in a battle; all you see is what is around you and the big picture is a blank. Command headquarters is where the overall progress is tracked and strategy planned, and the radio operator is in the thick of it.
Uncle Pat laughed a bit at Jim Hutchens, the fire boss, and made a few remarks about old fire horses responding to the sound of the bells. Jim was in his element when things got bad and kept the radios and the phone line busy.
There were hotshot crews and firefighters from all over the U.S. at this Huckleberry Fire, and a lot of them were camped at Big Creek. The mix of personalities and nationalities made for some humorous moments.
Mind you, these were hear-say, gathered from the radio and the office gossip.
There were a group of black firefighters camped along the creek by the station, and there were several bears that hung around the station, attracted by the dump behind the station. (Yes, in those benighted times, bears were accepted as neighbors and generally were pretty good ones, educated that they weren't the dominant species and thus careful in their forays. Having them frequent the dumps was not seen as a bad thing.)
One of the firefighters near the creek woke up in the middle of the night to find a young black bear happily licking the dried sweat off of his arms. He screamed, the bear took off one way and he took off the other. The Fark factor was that you can't run in a sleeping bag ... he ended up in the creek, bag and all.
I heard that a couple of the Indian crews had problems too. Several of them were in the back of a pickup being transported to a new hotspot when a young bear trotted across the road. The crew bailed out with axes and chased it into the timber - where the Mommy bear was! The crew returned to the truck faster than they left it!
Another mentionable incident was the result of bosses putting crews from two different tribes into the same small camp. Two tribes with rivalries... Some bloodshed ensued, but no deaths.
I guess this must have been at another fire where I was the radioman, beacuse no civilians were allowed up the North Fork at the time. A grade school class and teacher on a field trip were at the fire camp and gathered around the radio when they got more of an earful than they planned on.
The FVCC frowns on profanity on the airways, even USFS airways, but about the time every little ear was cocked toward the radio listening to a fire boss give a situational update, the FB had a very close call. A burning snag fell and nearly nailed him, and he was pretty verbal for a bit. He described the tree & its ancestry, the ancestry and lineage of the guys that hadn't either cut the snag down or warned him it was burning, and everything in general with a lot of other colorful adjectives, and all of it over an open mike.
The teacher almost sprained an ankle gathering her shell-shocked little brood and getting out of there.
I missed Big Creek's most hectic moment, when the fire blew up, the campground - rated as one of the most beautiful in the state - burned and the station itself was in danger. The guy in the lookout on top of Huckleberry was evacuated by helicopter, and the crews had to pull back.
The fire made a real run to the north at the same time and if it had not been stopped and held at the river would probably have burned clear into Canada.
When I got back, the worst of the fire was over and mop-up was in progress. The woods were closed to all of the public and all normal work was suspended because of the extreme dryness.
My next chore was to babysit a cabin & the radio and telephone in it. Stay tuned.
TBC
(Me) (Home)
Uncle Pat laughed a bit at Jim Hutchens, the fire boss, and made a few remarks about old fire horses responding to the sound of the bells. Jim was in his element when things got bad and kept the radios and the phone line busy.
There were hotshot crews and firefighters from all over the U.S. at this Huckleberry Fire, and a lot of them were camped at Big Creek. The mix of personalities and nationalities made for some humorous moments.
Mind you, these were hear-say, gathered from the radio and the office gossip.
There were a group of black firefighters camped along the creek by the station, and there were several bears that hung around the station, attracted by the dump behind the station. (Yes, in those benighted times, bears were accepted as neighbors and generally were pretty good ones, educated that they weren't the dominant species and thus careful in their forays. Having them frequent the dumps was not seen as a bad thing.)
One of the firefighters near the creek woke up in the middle of the night to find a young black bear happily licking the dried sweat off of his arms. He screamed, the bear took off one way and he took off the other. The Fark factor was that you can't run in a sleeping bag ... he ended up in the creek, bag and all.
I heard that a couple of the Indian crews had problems too. Several of them were in the back of a pickup being transported to a new hotspot when a young bear trotted across the road. The crew bailed out with axes and chased it into the timber - where the Mommy bear was! The crew returned to the truck faster than they left it!
Another mentionable incident was the result of bosses putting crews from two different tribes into the same small camp. Two tribes with rivalries... Some bloodshed ensued, but no deaths.
I guess this must have been at another fire where I was the radioman, beacuse no civilians were allowed up the North Fork at the time. A grade school class and teacher on a field trip were at the fire camp and gathered around the radio when they got more of an earful than they planned on.
The FVCC frowns on profanity on the airways, even USFS airways, but about the time every little ear was cocked toward the radio listening to a fire boss give a situational update, the FB had a very close call. A burning snag fell and nearly nailed him, and he was pretty verbal for a bit. He described the tree & its ancestry, the ancestry and lineage of the guys that hadn't either cut the snag down or warned him it was burning, and everything in general with a lot of other colorful adjectives, and all of it over an open mike.
The teacher almost sprained an ankle gathering her shell-shocked little brood and getting out of there.
I missed Big Creek's most hectic moment, when the fire blew up, the campground - rated as one of the most beautiful in the state - burned and the station itself was in danger. The guy in the lookout on top of Huckleberry was evacuated by helicopter, and the crews had to pull back.
The fire made a real run to the north at the same time and if it had not been stopped and held at the river would probably have burned clear into Canada.
When I got back, the worst of the fire was over and mop-up was in progress. The woods were closed to all of the public and all normal work was suspended because of the extreme dryness.
My next chore was to babysit a cabin & the radio and telephone in it. Stay tuned.
TBC
(Me) (Home)
| HOM: NNC Flashback | for everyone |
I have mentioned rabbit hunting.
Idaho was overloaded with jackrabbits at the time, a high point in their cycle, and in some places it was impossible to drive at night without hitting some. We spent a lot of time out hunting them.
Night was the favorite time, slow-cruising the trails in the desert with headlights on and one or two of us sitting on the hood with rifles.
Tip: Never slam the brakes on with someone riding the hood - when they slide off they get mad and they are armed!
Anyway, it was a challenge to try to hit the jacks as they ran. Lots of fun, lots of misses, and little damage to the rabbit population.
Tip #2: make sure you know the area! We broke that rule once, meandering over a mix of ruts and trails along a ridge top till we came to the edge of a field. I stopped, trying to figure out which way to go, and suddenly we were pinned by a spotlight from two ridges over. Someone yelled, an engine started, and I made a fast circle and dove back into the trail we had been on, with the lights out. coming in, we were going at a walk - heading out, the chase was on, we were at full fearful bounce and we knew what the rabbits felt like!
I had a head start, but the pursuers spotted my brake lights. I took a wrong turn and found myself in another field, so I headed out across it at full speed, still with no lights. One of the guys with me yelled at me to turn on the lights, so i did - and swerved - just in time to avoiding running end-on into an irrigation pipe setup.
We saw a house across the field and headed for it, slammed to a stop in their yard. The pursuers stopped back in the field as the owners of the house came out. We explained - breathlessly, I suspect - what happened, and they directed us to the road and we vamoosed.
The next day I drove back out, alone, and located that house, then went up and talked to the folks there and offered to pay for any damage we had done. They were very nice about it and filled me in on what had happened.
The pursuers were their neighbors, who had been losing gas from a big tank they had at the edge of the field just below where we popped out. Vigilante justice was still somewhat of an option there and they were sure we were the thieves, till we headed for that house.
I never really felt much like hunting rabbits in the dark after that. Chasing girls was much safer.
TBC
(Me) (Home)
Idaho was overloaded with jackrabbits at the time, a high point in their cycle, and in some places it was impossible to drive at night without hitting some. We spent a lot of time out hunting them.
Night was the favorite time, slow-cruising the trails in the desert with headlights on and one or two of us sitting on the hood with rifles.
Tip: Never slam the brakes on with someone riding the hood - when they slide off they get mad and they are armed!
Anyway, it was a challenge to try to hit the jacks as they ran. Lots of fun, lots of misses, and little damage to the rabbit population.
Tip #2: make sure you know the area! We broke that rule once, meandering over a mix of ruts and trails along a ridge top till we came to the edge of a field. I stopped, trying to figure out which way to go, and suddenly we were pinned by a spotlight from two ridges over. Someone yelled, an engine started, and I made a fast circle and dove back into the trail we had been on, with the lights out. coming in, we were going at a walk - heading out, the chase was on, we were at full fearful bounce and we knew what the rabbits felt like!
I had a head start, but the pursuers spotted my brake lights. I took a wrong turn and found myself in another field, so I headed out across it at full speed, still with no lights. One of the guys with me yelled at me to turn on the lights, so i did - and swerved - just in time to avoiding running end-on into an irrigation pipe setup.
We saw a house across the field and headed for it, slammed to a stop in their yard. The pursuers stopped back in the field as the owners of the house came out. We explained - breathlessly, I suspect - what happened, and they directed us to the road and we vamoosed.
The next day I drove back out, alone, and located that house, then went up and talked to the folks there and offered to pay for any damage we had done. They were very nice about it and filled me in on what had happened.
The pursuers were their neighbors, who had been losing gas from a big tank they had at the edge of the field just below where we popped out. Vigilante justice was still somewhat of an option there and they were sure we were the thieves, till we headed for that house.
I never really felt much like hunting rabbits in the dark after that. Chasing girls was much safer.
TBC
(Me) (Home)
| HOM: 1967 - The Summer Of Love. Not. | for everyone |
That August was pivotal in many ways. I was back on the TSI crew thinning timber.
This is a bit from the USFS on the big event of that month.
I knew the "Flathead Fire" as the "Huckleberry Fire", so just interchange the terms as you wish.
When the fire was at it worst, when the planes were dropping retardant on the Big Creek camp ground, I took a couple of days off. I'll cover that interlude in a later post.
I was drafted as a radio operator once again, sitting in the Comm Shack at Big Creek and playing radioman. I liked the job - safe, secure, and in the middle of everything going on. Ike Weaver was a great boss, as was Jim Hutchens. the fire boss.
Not too many incidents stick in my memory any more. I know I put in long hours - over 12 a day - slept in a USFS-issue sleeping bag under the tree across the driveway or by the door to the radio shack, and lived on Bill Anderson's coffee.
On one of the quieter afternoons Art Vlasak came in and dropped a fancily knotted rope on the desk, saying "That's a hackamore knot. Let's see if you can tie one." It took me two days of puzzling before I copied the knot by carefully weaving the strands. When I showed it to Art he was impressed till I told him I still didn't know how to tie it.
He showed me the trick.
The center, in step 4, is placed over the horses nose, the loop goes behind his ears, and the loose ends work as reins. Insta-hack!
TBC
(Me) (Home)
This is a bit from the USFS on the big event of that month.
------
-----" During the evening of August 11, 1967, dry lightning that crossed the Continental Divide and continued in the early morning hours of August 12 inaugurated Glacier National Park’s fire season. Fire spotters counted more than 100 ground strikes, the first at 6:25 p.m., with the first new fire reported at 7:05 p.m. The sparks started twenty new fires, burning in total more than 12,000 acres of timber. One of the most aggressive fires, the Flathead Fire, was discovered about halfway up the Apgar and Huckleberry mountains. The fuels of this fire were lodgepole-larch reproduction with heavy snags, the result of the major 1926 fire in the region. By early afternoon on August 17, the fire had spread to 650 acres. It doubled in size in the next seven hours, with a strong convection column angled up the slope. A cold front changed the direction of the wind, and by 10:30 p.m. on August 18, the fire had jumped the North Fork of the Flathead River, reaching the Flathead National Forest. It continued to spread downhill until August 20, when the center portion of the fire burned out and created two smaller fires, one on the northwest part of a ridge and the other on the southeast. By August 22, more the 4,645 acres of timber had burned.
The situation turned worse on August 23. The Weather Bureau issued a red flag weather alert, predicting that a weak Pacific frontal system passing through the area would bring high winds and dry lightning storms during the subsequent twenty-four hours. In response, the park tried to tie in bulldozer and hand-dug fire lines before the winds arrived. By 3:00 p.m., before the lines could be joined, the winds accelerated to between forty and sixty miles per hour. Firefighters were forced to retreat as the fire rapidly spread. Individual fires could be found as much as a half-mile in front of the main fire, with embers thrown ahead by the force of the wind. By the end of the day, another 3,500 acres of vegetation had burned.
Fires continued for another month, a result of the dry conditions, and when they came to an end, suppression advocates pointed to their successes. Throughout the Northern Rockies, fires had been controlled and a comparison with the terrible fires of 1910 highlighted a stunning contrast. Instead of the roughly 3 million acres of timber that burned in 1910, the 1967 fires only covered a total of 90,000 acres. Fatalities dropped from seventy-eight to three, with one resulting from a heart attack. Technology played an enormous role in this success. Aerial infrared scanners, oblivious to the smoke plumes that obscured vision, mapped fire perimeters. Fires that would have burned for days in 1910 were detected early and control efforts began within hours. Radio, telephone, and teletype networks provided instantaneous communications, allowing for immediate knowledge of new fires and coordinated responses. A national infrastructure also contributed to the 1967 success. The region was declared a national disaster area, and the federal Office of Emergency Preparedness joined in suppression efforts. Full closure of the national forests, a status akin to martial law, was enacted, keeping visitors away and limiting the chance of additional accidental fire. The response was impressive; the damage – with the exception of the 56,000-acre Sundance Fire in northern Idaho – was minimal. Suppression, most observers agreed, worked."
The situation turned worse on August 23. The Weather Bureau issued a red flag weather alert, predicting that a weak Pacific frontal system passing through the area would bring high winds and dry lightning storms during the subsequent twenty-four hours. In response, the park tried to tie in bulldozer and hand-dug fire lines before the winds arrived. By 3:00 p.m., before the lines could be joined, the winds accelerated to between forty and sixty miles per hour. Firefighters were forced to retreat as the fire rapidly spread. Individual fires could be found as much as a half-mile in front of the main fire, with embers thrown ahead by the force of the wind. By the end of the day, another 3,500 acres of vegetation had burned.
Fires continued for another month, a result of the dry conditions, and when they came to an end, suppression advocates pointed to their successes. Throughout the Northern Rockies, fires had been controlled and a comparison with the terrible fires of 1910 highlighted a stunning contrast. Instead of the roughly 3 million acres of timber that burned in 1910, the 1967 fires only covered a total of 90,000 acres. Fatalities dropped from seventy-eight to three, with one resulting from a heart attack. Technology played an enormous role in this success. Aerial infrared scanners, oblivious to the smoke plumes that obscured vision, mapped fire perimeters. Fires that would have burned for days in 1910 were detected early and control efforts began within hours. Radio, telephone, and teletype networks provided instantaneous communications, allowing for immediate knowledge of new fires and coordinated responses. A national infrastructure also contributed to the 1967 success. The region was declared a national disaster area, and the federal Office of Emergency Preparedness joined in suppression efforts. Full closure of the national forests, a status akin to martial law, was enacted, keeping visitors away and limiting the chance of additional accidental fire. The response was impressive; the damage – with the exception of the 56,000-acre Sundance Fire in northern Idaho – was minimal. Suppression, most observers agreed, worked."
I knew the "Flathead Fire" as the "Huckleberry Fire", so just interchange the terms as you wish.
When the fire was at it worst, when the planes were dropping retardant on the Big Creek camp ground, I took a couple of days off. I'll cover that interlude in a later post.
I was drafted as a radio operator once again, sitting in the Comm Shack at Big Creek and playing radioman. I liked the job - safe, secure, and in the middle of everything going on. Ike Weaver was a great boss, as was Jim Hutchens. the fire boss.
Not too many incidents stick in my memory any more. I know I put in long hours - over 12 a day - slept in a USFS-issue sleeping bag under the tree across the driveway or by the door to the radio shack, and lived on Bill Anderson's coffee.
On one of the quieter afternoons Art Vlasak came in and dropped a fancily knotted rope on the desk, saying "That's a hackamore knot. Let's see if you can tie one." It took me two days of puzzling before I copied the knot by carefully weaving the strands. When I showed it to Art he was impressed till I told him I still didn't know how to tie it.
He showed me the trick.
The center, in step 4, is placed over the horses nose, the loop goes behind his ears, and the loose ends work as reins. Insta-hack!
TBC
(Me) (Home)
| Best Book Blog | for everyone |
Best I have found, anyway.
Maybe someday i too can qualify as a "Bastard with a Bookshp"!
Excerpts from the blog:
![[booktowns6_c668d699ab.jpg]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_A5qhnmd_hog/SJjd-tvertI/AAAAAAAABqA/fKNebwKWl4w/s1600/booktowns6_c668d699ab.jpg)
![[booktownss240307_9288a.jpg]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_A5qhnmd_hog/SJjd-9Q6TlI/AAAAAAAABqI/2K7IYLKoEB0/s1600/booktownss240307_9288a.jpg)
![[car.jpg]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_A5qhnmd_hog/SIxNWXasM1I/AAAAAAAABpw/rddjgWY8bcM/s1600/car.jpg)
"A similar tale is set in 1965 in a provincial bookshop where trade is slow. The dealer has a sale of the books upstairs, lesser books but useful stock--even after severe reductions there are 10,000 books left. Rather than haul them down to the dump he decides to give the whole lot to the young girl who comes in on afternoons when he is out doing house calls, fishing, watching cricket etc., She graciously accepts them and says she will arrange to have them out as soon as possible. He sets off to a local auction and on his return is greatly surprised to find all the books have gone. The girl explains that a guy came in from a movie company needing 10000 books - for the book burning scenes in Fahrenheit 451 that they were filming nearby. She only charged £1 per book."
Overall, lots of info on rare books, stories from dealers, and a lot of great information.
(Me) (Home)
Maybe someday i too can qualify as a "Bastard with a Bookshp"!
Excerpts from the blog:
"A similar tale is set in 1965 in a provincial bookshop where trade is slow. The dealer has a sale of the books upstairs, lesser books but useful stock--even after severe reductions there are 10,000 books left. Rather than haul them down to the dump he decides to give the whole lot to the young girl who comes in on afternoons when he is out doing house calls, fishing, watching cricket etc., She graciously accepts them and says she will arrange to have them out as soon as possible. He sets off to a local auction and on his return is greatly surprised to find all the books have gone. The girl explains that a guy came in from a movie company needing 10000 books - for the book burning scenes in Fahrenheit 451 that they were filming nearby. She only charged £1 per book."
Overall, lots of info on rare books, stories from dealers, and a lot of great information.
(Me) (Home)
| Hom: Tommy Riedel | for everyone |
Tom and his wife Mary owned the farm to the south of ours, which now houses Dennis Carver's proud new subdivision. (Mary was an Emmert, related to Mike Emmert, who Dad purchased the farm from. Her nickname was Pat, which I guess tied in with Mom's childhood nickname of "Pete". I don't know the story behind those nicknames, but I think they had something to do with dolls that each owned.)
When I was a freshman or sophomore I used to walk to Riedel's corner to meet the school bus and usually visited with Tommy while I was waiting.
Tom was a great guy. He started my ammunition collection by giving me a .30M1 carbine cartridge. He used to tell me stories about his growing up in Kalispell - I wish I could remember more of them.
One that stuck in memory was when he and some friends went into the old Kalispell Mercantile. The KM was the main store for everything from tools to toys back before WWII, so they wandered around and into the sporting goods, with Tommy pulling a little red wagon like an innocent little kid.
When the clerk's back was turned, they dumped a case of .22 rimfire ammo into the wagon and walked out.
Country kids, .22 rifles and five thousand rounds of ammunition made for some interesting times! They packed their guns and their loot up near Foy's lake and proceeded to shoot up every target of opportunity they could find. When that got boring, someone suggested playing cowboys and Indians.
Tommy thought it was a lot of fun till he peeked over a rock and got a faceful of chips from a very near miss. Then he decided he could hear his mother calling and went home.
To the best of his memory, nobody got badly hurt and no one was able to prove they did the theft, but they avoided the KM for a long time afterward.
TBC
(Me) (Home)
When I was a freshman or sophomore I used to walk to Riedel's corner to meet the school bus and usually visited with Tommy while I was waiting.
Tom was a great guy. He started my ammunition collection by giving me a .30M1 carbine cartridge. He used to tell me stories about his growing up in Kalispell - I wish I could remember more of them.
One that stuck in memory was when he and some friends went into the old Kalispell Mercantile. The KM was the main store for everything from tools to toys back before WWII, so they wandered around and into the sporting goods, with Tommy pulling a little red wagon like an innocent little kid.
When the clerk's back was turned, they dumped a case of .22 rimfire ammo into the wagon and walked out.
Country kids, .22 rifles and five thousand rounds of ammunition made for some interesting times! They packed their guns and their loot up near Foy's lake and proceeded to shoot up every target of opportunity they could find. When that got boring, someone suggested playing cowboys and Indians.
Tommy thought it was a lot of fun till he peeked over a rock and got a faceful of chips from a very near miss. Then he decided he could hear his mother calling and went home.
To the best of his memory, nobody got badly hurt and no one was able to prove they did the theft, but they avoided the KM for a long time afterward.
TBC
(Me) (Home)
| The Book List 9/8/2008 | for everyone |
The Bedside Book: "Long Way Down" was excellent, but too short.
From Publishers Weekly
After collaborating on Dead Heat (2007), bestseller Francis and his son, Felix, deliver another gripping thriller with a thoroughbred racing backdrop. Soon after London barrister Geoffrey Mason, an amateur jockey by avocation, starts receiving a series of threatening messages from a former client, Julian Trent, whose conviction for assault was overturned on appeal, Mason reluctantly accepts the defense of a jockey, Steve Mitchell, accused of the pitch-fork murder of fellow rider Scot Barlow at a steeplechase event. Mitchell and Barlow had fallen out over Barlow's sister, a vet and Mitchell's former girlfriend, who took her own life just a short while before. When unknown parties order Mason to lose the case, he must balance his professional ethics and his sense of self-preservation. The solid writing and engaging lead will carry readers along at a brisk pace, though some may find the dramatic courtroom revelation of the murderer overly theatrical. (Sept.)
Desk:
Unrepentant Sinner (Paperback) by Charles Askins
Product Description
Colonel Askins is an adventurer. Whether it be fighting his way out of an ambush, hunting tiger in Asia or sniping along the Rhine, Askins has done it with gusto. Here he recounts his early days as a forest ranger, his decade of slinging lead on the Mexican border, his astounding success as a competitive pistol shot, his combat participation in World War II, his adventures as a paratrooper in Vietnam and his career as one of the world's leading big-game hunters.
Silks (Hardcover)
by Dick Francis (Author), Felix Francis (Author)From Publishers Weekly
After collaborating on Dead Heat (2007), bestseller Francis and his son, Felix, deliver another gripping thriller with a thoroughbred racing backdrop. Soon after London barrister Geoffrey Mason, an amateur jockey by avocation, starts receiving a series of threatening messages from a former client, Julian Trent, whose conviction for assault was overturned on appeal, Mason reluctantly accepts the defense of a jockey, Steve Mitchell, accused of the pitch-fork murder of fellow rider Scot Barlow at a steeplechase event. Mitchell and Barlow had fallen out over Barlow's sister, a vet and Mitchell's former girlfriend, who took her own life just a short while before. When unknown parties order Mason to lose the case, he must balance his professional ethics and his sense of self-preservation. The solid writing and engaging lead will carry readers along at a brisk pace, though some may find the dramatic courtroom revelation of the murderer overly theatrical. (Sept.)
Desk:
Unrepentant Sinner (Paperback) by Charles Askins
Colonel Askins is an adventurer. Whether it be fighting his way out of an ambush, hunting tiger in Asia or sniping along the Rhine, Askins has done it with gusto. Here he recounts his early days as a forest ranger, his decade of slinging lead on the Mexican border, his astounding success as a competitive pistol shot, his combat participation in World War II, his adventures as a paratrooper in Vietnam and his career as one of the world's leading big-game hunters.
| The NWMACA Fall Gun Show | for everyone |
I wandered in there this morning before it opened to the public - and got detained by security for not have a dealer's badge. I had to hang around the door till Paul Willis, show chairman, showed up.
Paul gave me a dealer's badge as he says I am a "Dealer Emeritus" - a reward for 25 years of setting up at every show. He also told me I looked "Elderly". I couldn't shoot him - too many witnesses and no ammo!
It was neat to wander the show and visit with old acquaintances., with a little bitter-sweet mixed in because of the missing faces like Les Bauska's. I miss being able to get a table and be a real dealer, but at least I don't get so foot sore this way -when I have a table, I rarely sit behind it - I pace around in front of it and end the weekend tired out.
Bought a couple of things from Maynard Denna. He gave me a box to put the stuff in, so I asked him if he'd turn his back while I loaded the box. He did ... it took all the fun out of joking.
Being trusted is a two-edged sword - makes me happy but disgruntled. Being trusted by someone means you can't take any advantage of them at all. Oh well, I spent a long time building that trust here so I suppose I might as well enjoy it.
Lots of fun stuff to drool over. Most tempting was a conversion kit to let you shoot .22 lr ammo in a Ruger mini-14. Since it takes me about 30 seconds to disassemble a Mini and 4-5 hours to get it back together, my innate laziness made me pass on it.
There were a couple of beautiful rifles there with gorgeous wood and ungodly prices - each of them cost more than I have ever spent on a vehicle! I looked at oddball stuff and for cheap stuff that might catch my interest, but there wasn't much there in those categories.
I might go back tomorrow & visit a bit more.
(Me) (Home)
Paul gave me a dealer's badge as he says I am a "Dealer Emeritus" - a reward for 25 years of setting up at every show. He also told me I looked "Elderly". I couldn't shoot him - too many witnesses and no ammo!
It was neat to wander the show and visit with old acquaintances., with a little bitter-sweet mixed in because of the missing faces like Les Bauska's. I miss being able to get a table and be a real dealer, but at least I don't get so foot sore this way -when I have a table, I rarely sit behind it - I pace around in front of it and end the weekend tired out.
Bought a couple of things from Maynard Denna. He gave me a box to put the stuff in, so I asked him if he'd turn his back while I loaded the box. He did ... it took all the fun out of joking.
Being trusted is a two-edged sword - makes me happy but disgruntled. Being trusted by someone means you can't take any advantage of them at all. Oh well, I spent a long time building that trust here so I suppose I might as well enjoy it.
Lots of fun stuff to drool over. Most tempting was a conversion kit to let you shoot .22 lr ammo in a Ruger mini-14. Since it takes me about 30 seconds to disassemble a Mini and 4-5 hours to get it back together, my innate laziness made me pass on it.
There were a couple of beautiful rifles there with gorgeous wood and ungodly prices - each of them cost more than I have ever spent on a vehicle! I looked at oddball stuff and for cheap stuff that might catch my interest, but there wasn't much there in those categories.
I might go back tomorrow & visit a bit more.
(Me) (Home)
| Blogging: Good Intentions | for everyone |
And poor carry-through.
And too many distractions...
I think I am getting the end-of summer rush here in the store, plus I am seriously weeding down a few categories of books to make the place a little more navigable.
Pump problems out on the farm added a little tension. Calls from friends needing computer support added a bit too, and took up a chunk of time.
Add laziness/inertia into the mix and you get a blank blog. I am about 1/3 of the way through the re-reading of the HOM and hopefully will get some time to mull over the contents.
Doing the HOM is time consuming - not the actual writing, but the remembering and the organizing I have to do before I try to write - changing the names to protect the guilty, etc. Once i get on a roll with it, though, a lot of my lay-awake-for-hours nights get filled with the memories and associations and help fill the pages in here.
Hopefully this doodling around will help me get some momentum going. hang in there!
(Me) (Home)
And too many distractions...
I think I am getting the end-of summer rush here in the store, plus I am seriously weeding down a few categories of books to make the place a little more navigable.
Pump problems out on the farm added a little tension. Calls from friends needing computer support added a bit too, and took up a chunk of time.
Add laziness/inertia into the mix and you get a blank blog. I am about 1/3 of the way through the re-reading of the HOM and hopefully will get some time to mull over the contents.
Doing the HOM is time consuming - not the actual writing, but the remembering and the organizing I have to do before I try to write - changing the names to protect the guilty, etc. Once i get on a roll with it, though, a lot of my lay-awake-for-hours nights get filled with the memories and associations and help fill the pages in here.
Hopefully this doodling around will help me get some momentum going. hang in there!
(Me) (Home)
| READING! | for everyone |
Bedside:
Long Way Down by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman (Hardcover - Sep 4, 2008)
On 12 May 2007, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman set off on a 15,000 mile trip from John O'Groats to Cape Town. This is their story. I like reading motorcycle travel and general adventure travel books.
Truck/Van (A copy in each)
In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson (Paperback - May 15, 2001)
Treo PDA:
(Me) (Home)
On 12 May 2007, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman set off on a 15,000 mile trip from John O'Groats to Cape Town. This is their story. I like reading motorcycle travel and general adventure travel books.
Truck/Van (A copy in each)
In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson (Paperback - May 15, 2001)
Treo PDA:
King of the Khyber Rifles by Talbot Mundy (Hardcover - 1916)
Desk:
Desk:
The Buffalo Rock by Bob Faulkner (Paperback - Aug 8, 2008)
Bob is an old friend & neighbor, so I am dumping in the entire article from the Daily Interlake:
Ex-policeman pens novel about Pony Express
Posted: Monday, Sep 01, 2008 - 11:48:57 pm MDT
By CANDACE CHASE/Daily Inter Lake
Author Bob Faulkner, 67, spent 20 years as a Los Angeles policeman, but his new novel “The Buffalo Rock” has nothing to do with modern urban crime.
It details the thrills and adventures of an early priority mailman — one Tornado Tom Thomas of the Pony Express.
“I had this story rattling around in my head for years,” said Faulkner, a lower valley resident.
About four years ago, he began researching and spinning the tale of young reporter Grant Collins who, in 1923, seeks out the last living Pony Express rider, the aforementioned Tornado Tom.
Collins finds him living in Fort Benton then begins chronicling his adventures, including his stint with the Pony Express in 1860 in St. Joseph, Missouri. Faulkner laughed as he recalled the advertised qualifications for riders.
Originally, he said he pictured riders as looking like Wild Bill Hickok. Through research, he learned Hickok was too big so he became a station agent and wrangler for the Pony Express instead of a rider.
“They were specifically looking for small, skinny guys — orphans preferred — because they didn’t know if they would come home,” Faulkner said.
To overcome that rather dismal prospect, the Pony Express offered riders $100 a month, a tremendous wage in that era. Riders also were issued weapons to fend off frequent attacks although most opted not to carry the heavy pistols.
“Company policy was ‘don’t fight — run for it,’” he said.
Riders galloped 10 to 15 miles between horse changes, sitting on a “mochila,” a sort of blanket thrown on top of the saddle that held letters and packages locked in pouches. Express riders crossed the country to Sacramento, Calif., in about 10 days.
Faulkner said he remains intrigued by how the Pony Express continues to fascinate the nation, considering the service— made obsolete by the telegraph — folded after just one year.
“One of the last big things they did was carry Abe Lincoln’s inaugural address to California,” Faulkner said. “That’s what kept California in the Union.”
He dropped a clue that this historic event plays into the foundation of his novel.
Faulkner took the name of Tom’s Montana ranch, “The Buffalo Rock,” as the title for his epic 615-page story published in August by Stand Up America, USA, the Flathead Valley multimedia company founded by retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely.
A national political commentator and author, Vallely praised Faulkner’s book
as “one of the best yarns I have read in years.” The book also was reviewed and recommended by Gerald Molen, the Academy-Award-winning producer of “Schindler’s List” and by prolific writer Bill Brooks.
Brooks, author of the recent “The Stone Garden: The Epic Life of Billy the Kid,” compared the book to such classics as “The Virginian” and “Little Big Man.” He complimented the book’s humor, history and insight into the character of men who become legend.
For Faulkner, Brook’s praise was especially gratifying since he admires his writing.
“I’ve read a bunch of his books,” he said.
A self-described voracious reader, Faulkner said he grew up in Indiana with an insatiable appetite for the written word, particularly history. He ended up in California as a young man after serving in the Marine Corps.
That’s when an ad in the Los Angeles Times for police officers jumped off the page at him.
“When I was a kid, everyone watched ‘Dragnet,’” he said.
He applied and was accepted for the police academy. A career of almost 20 years followed with the Los Angeles Police Department.
“Those really were the good old days of being an L.A. police officer,” he said. “I have a thousand police stories to tell.”
He retired in 1983 but continued working for a time as a private investigator and then a representative of the National Rifle Association. Faulkner moved here about 15 years ago, and his literary career blossomed.
“I had the ambition for years to become a writer,” he said.
Faulkner joined the Writers of the Flathead to work on his book idea. Through their meetings, classes and seminars, he refined his novel’s plot, fleshed out his characters and researched the eras of his story.
A stickler for accuracy, Faulkner checked out everything from guns to iconic western characters. He even made sure he described his street scenes correctly.
“I had to dig up the history of when streets were paved,” Faulkner said. “Fort Benton had paved streets in 1923.”
As Tom, his niece Dixie, the young reporter Grant Collins and many other characters evolved, the author developed flow charts to keep track of how they were all related. As he wrote, he said they became very real to him.
“I even had dreams about them,” he said.
Readers who would like to meet his characters may purchase the book at Borders, Amazon.com, Standupamericausa.com or bobfaulkner.com. The price varies.
Those who would like to meet the author and purchase “The Buffalo Rock” may do so at a book signing from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7, at the Vista Linda Restaurant Pavilion located just north of MacKinaw’s Grill in Somers.
Along with Faulkner, Vallely also will autograph his books “Endgame” and “Baghdad Ablaze” at the reception that features wine and hors d’ouevres.
Even as the print dries on this novel, Faulkner has new works in development drawing from those thousand stories from his career as an L.A. policeman.
“I really do enjoy writing,” he said. “It always was a desire. Now it’s an absolute passion.”
Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.
Bob is an old friend & neighbor, so I am dumping in the entire article from the Daily Interlake:
Ex-policeman pens novel about Pony Express
Posted: Monday, Sep 01, 2008 - 11:48:57 pm MDT
By CANDACE CHASE/Daily Inter Lake
Author Bob Faulkner, 67, spent 20 years as a Los Angeles policeman, but his new novel “The Buffalo Rock” has nothing to do with modern urban crime.
It details the thrills and adventures of an early priority mailman — one Tornado Tom Thomas of the Pony Express.
“I had this story rattling around in my head for years,” said Faulkner, a lower valley resident.
About four years ago, he began researching and spinning the tale of young reporter Grant Collins who, in 1923, seeks out the last living Pony Express rider, the aforementioned Tornado Tom.
Collins finds him living in Fort Benton then begins chronicling his adventures, including his stint with the Pony Express in 1860 in St. Joseph, Missouri. Faulkner laughed as he recalled the advertised qualifications for riders.
Originally, he said he pictured riders as looking like Wild Bill Hickok. Through research, he learned Hickok was too big so he became a station agent and wrangler for the Pony Express instead of a rider.
“They were specifically looking for small, skinny guys — orphans preferred — because they didn’t know if they would come home,” Faulkner said.
To overcome that rather dismal prospect, the Pony Express offered riders $100 a month, a tremendous wage in that era. Riders also were issued weapons to fend off frequent attacks although most opted not to carry the heavy pistols.
“Company policy was ‘don’t fight — run for it,’” he said.
Riders galloped 10 to 15 miles between horse changes, sitting on a “mochila,” a sort of blanket thrown on top of the saddle that held letters and packages locked in pouches. Express riders crossed the country to Sacramento, Calif., in about 10 days.
Faulkner said he remains intrigued by how the Pony Express continues to fascinate the nation, considering the service— made obsolete by the telegraph — folded after just one year.
“One of the last big things they did was carry Abe Lincoln’s inaugural address to California,” Faulkner said. “That’s what kept California in the Union.”
He dropped a clue that this historic event plays into the foundation of his novel.
Faulkner took the name of Tom’s Montana ranch, “The Buffalo Rock,” as the title for his epic 615-page story published in August by Stand Up America, USA, the Flathead Valley multimedia company founded by retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely.
A national political commentator and author, Vallely praised Faulkner’s book
as “one of the best yarns I have read in years.” The book also was reviewed and recommended by Gerald Molen, the Academy-Award-winning producer of “Schindler’s List” and by prolific writer Bill Brooks.
Brooks, author of the recent “The Stone Garden: The Epic Life of Billy the Kid,” compared the book to such classics as “The Virginian” and “Little Big Man.” He complimented the book’s humor, history and insight into the character of men who become legend.
For Faulkner, Brook’s praise was especially gratifying since he admires his writing.
“I’ve read a bunch of his books,” he said.
A self-described voracious reader, Faulkner said he grew up in Indiana with an insatiable appetite for the written word, particularly history. He ended up in California as a young man after serving in the Marine Corps.
That’s when an ad in the Los Angeles Times for police officers jumped off the page at him.
“When I was a kid, everyone watched ‘Dragnet,’” he said.
He applied and was accepted for the police academy. A career of almost 20 years followed with the Los Angeles Police Department.
“Those really were the good old days of being an L.A. police officer,” he said. “I have a thousand police stories to tell.”
He retired in 1983 but continued working for a time as a private investigator and then a representative of the National Rifle Association. Faulkner moved here about 15 years ago, and his literary career blossomed.
“I had the ambition for years to become a writer,” he said.
Faulkner joined the Writers of the Flathead to work on his book idea. Through their meetings, classes and seminars, he refined his novel’s plot, fleshed out his characters and researched the eras of his story.
A stickler for accuracy, Faulkner checked out everything from guns to iconic western characters. He even made sure he described his street scenes correctly.
“I had to dig up the history of when streets were paved,” Faulkner said. “Fort Benton had paved streets in 1923.”
As Tom, his niece Dixie, the young reporter Grant Collins and many other characters evolved, the author developed flow charts to keep track of how they were all related. As he wrote, he said they became very real to him.
“I even had dreams about them,” he said.
Readers who would like to meet his characters may purchase the book at Borders, Amazon.com, Standupamericausa.com or bobfaulkner.com. The price varies.
Those who would like to meet the author and purchase “The Buffalo Rock” may do so at a book signing from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7, at the Vista Linda Restaurant Pavilion located just north of MacKinaw’s Grill in Somers.
Along with Faulkner, Vallely also will autograph his books “Endgame” and “Baghdad Ablaze” at the reception that features wine and hors d’ouevres.
Even as the print dries on this novel, Faulkner has new works in development drawing from those thousand stories from his career as an L.A. policeman.
“I really do enjoy writing,” he said. “It always was a desire. Now it’s an absolute passion.”
Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.
12
| It's Labor Day, September 01, 2008 | for everyone |
So am I laboring? As much as I ever do! The door is unlocked, the lights are on, the sign is flipped to "OPEN", some paperwork is caught up, and some books shelved. Normal day - pfffft to holidays!
I tend to ignore holidays. I hate crowds and the weather is usually crappy, so I come in, open the store, grab a cup of coffee & a good book and proceed to thoroughly have fun for the day.
And yeah, now a hectic summer is winding down, things that needed to be dealt with are mostly done, and things in my life are settling down. I am going to try to resurrect this blog and resume the autobiography - maybe.
First item on the agenda is to re-read everything I have written - so I don't start repeating myself in a repetitiously repetitive & redundant manner - and see if any further worms of overlooked memory crawl up onto the surface to be plucked and immortalized in here.
So, if any of my usual two readers still check this space, there might be material coming. If not bio stuff, than other stuff. Hopefully the next twelve months won't hold quite the drama and tension of the last twelve.
(Me) (Home)
I tend to ignore holidays. I hate crowds and the weather is usually crappy, so I come in, open the store, grab a cup of coffee & a good book and proceed to thoroughly have fun for the day.
And yeah, now a hectic summer is winding down, things that needed to be dealt with are mostly done, and things in my life are settling down. I am going to try to resurrect this blog and resume the autobiography - maybe.
First item on the agenda is to re-read everything I have written - so I don't start repeating myself in a repetitiously repetitive & redundant manner - and see if any further worms of overlooked memory crawl up onto the surface to be plucked and immortalized in here.
So, if any of my usual two readers still check this space, there might be material coming. If not bio stuff, than other stuff. Hopefully the next twelve months won't hold quite the drama and tension of the last twelve.
(Me) (Home)
| HOM: More on Pat, from Larry. | for everyone |
Got to thinking-Yes I know that can be dangerous! Did I ever mention huckleberries? Well when they got ripe back then, there were not as many folks out getting them where they were big and tasty as these types were way off the roads, beaten paths or whatever. When we would be out marking timber, we always had to eat our fill. I remember one time when Pat was recording and I was marking and measuring and found a bush that had berries on it that, honestly, were so damn big that you could take 4 bites out of one and throw the core away! No lie, just fact! Anyway Pat would holler "Hey where are you?" And I would holler back "I got a problem and have to eat my way out of it." Then he would find me and we would just have to eat our way out from under that bush.
Well, anyway back at Big Creek, Bill Anderson would always make us show him our tongues before supper and if they were purple, then he would wiggle that stub of a cigar around and tell us "No pie for you clowns tonight." So we got to where we would pack our dinner buckets with berries during the day and give them to Bill that night and then the next night he would have FRESH huckleberrie pie for the crews. That worked real well and got Bill off our backs. Of course there was not only me and Pat, but also Fred Young, Bob Wynecoop and Dick Lukes what were involved also.
About this same time of year, Grouse season was starting up. Back in those days you could pack iron. One day when Pat and I were heading up a fork in the road up Coal Creek, a chicken was in the road. Pat stopped and I got out and got down on the ground in my hands and knees with that old Colt that I have and I started sneaking up on that chicken. Pat kept whispering "aim for the head, aim for the head we don't want to cook that thing with a hole in its middle!" Well, just as I was getting ready to draw down on that poor grouse, I noticed a movement off to my right and here was Vance Conn, the Engineer, on the other side of the corner, sneaking up on that same chicken with fried grouse in his mind also. I think that bird got the hint and it flew so neither me and Pat or Vance and Flip Darling got any grouse for lunch that day.
There was almost always some lucky soul up there that would have a moose permit back then as those permits were going more to us locals than to rich Doctors, Lawyers or whatever from out of state. We had a special code that we used on the radio to let the station-Red Rogers-know where we were and that a moose was present. Then the Brush Crew or whoever had the permit would get their butts to where the moose would be at. The rig that had the fellow with the permit always had a rifle with them. That night, we all ate moose for supper. That way, the entire station got to savor the goodies and the shooter still got one hell of a lot of moose meat. We all seemed to like the liver, onions, mashed potatoes and gravy the best.
Boy things have sure changed in the Forestry Circus as now if they found out that there would be a firearm, of any kind in a rig, oh boy I sure hate to think of what would happen to the crew and/or the owner of that gun. That was back when it was a pretty well known fact that we all were responsible adults when it came to firearms. Not like some people would lead one to believe nowadays!
Just another fleeting thought of the moment that I thought that you might like to read about.
G'dy mate!
Everybody has a scheme that won't work.
Well, anyway back at Big Creek, Bill Anderson would always make us show him our tongues before supper and if they were purple, then he would wiggle that stub of a cigar around and tell us "No pie for you clowns tonight." So we got to where we would pack our dinner buckets with berries during the day and give them to Bill that night and then the next night he would have FRESH huckleberrie pie for the crews. That worked real well and got Bill off our backs. Of course there was not only me and Pat, but also Fred Young, Bob Wynecoop and Dick Lukes what were involved also.
About this same time of year, Grouse season was starting up. Back in those days you could pack iron. One day when Pat and I were heading up a fork in the road up Coal Creek, a chicken was in the road. Pat stopped and I got out and got down on the ground in my hands and knees with that old Colt that I have and I started sneaking up on that chicken. Pat kept whispering "aim for the head, aim for the head we don't want to cook that thing with a hole in its middle!" Well, just as I was getting ready to draw down on that poor grouse, I noticed a movement off to my right and here was Vance Conn, the Engineer, on the other side of the corner, sneaking up on that same chicken with fried grouse in his mind also. I think that bird got the hint and it flew so neither me and Pat or Vance and Flip Darling got any grouse for lunch that day.
There was almost always some lucky soul up there that would have a moose permit back then as those permits were going more to us locals than to rich Doctors, Lawyers or whatever from out of state. We had a special code that we used on the radio to let the station-Red Rogers-know where we were and that a moose was present. Then the Brush Crew or whoever had the permit would get their butts to where the moose would be at. The rig that had the fellow with the permit always had a rifle with them. That night, we all ate moose for supper. That way, the entire station got to savor the goodies and the shooter still got one hell of a lot of moose meat. We all seemed to like the liver, onions, mashed potatoes and gravy the best.
Boy things have sure changed in the Forestry Circus as now if they found out that there would be a firearm, of any kind in a rig, oh boy I sure hate to think of what would happen to the crew and/or the owner of that gun. That was back when it was a pretty well known fact that we all were responsible adults when it came to firearms. Not like some people would lead one to believe nowadays!
Just another fleeting thought of the moment that I thought that you might like to read about.
G'dy mate!
Everybody has a scheme that won't work.
| I feel like Mark Twain | for everyone |
The reports of my death have been exaggerated.
When Pat Grizzard died, (see below), the obit in the Interlake said he "managed" Blacktail Books. Somehow the word spread, not that Pat had died, but that "I" had died, resulting in phone calls and visits and a few massive double-takes from folks that walked in expecting me to be gone.
So, to all those who expressed their concern, Thank You. To those who were celebrating, My Apologies. To those that told me I hadn't been looking good lately, PFFFTT!! And to those who were worried about the book credit they had here, Safeguards Are In Effect. My dying won't cancel things out.
This has been educational. . .
When Pat Grizzard died, (see below), the obit in the Interlake said he "managed" Blacktail Books. Somehow the word spread, not that Pat had died, but that "I" had died, resulting in phone calls and visits and a few massive double-takes from folks that walked in expecting me to be gone.
So, to all those who expressed their concern, Thank You. To those who were celebrating, My Apologies. To those that told me I hadn't been looking good lately, PFFFTT!! And to those who were worried about the book credit they had here, Safeguards Are In Effect. My dying won't cancel things out.
This has been educational. . .
| Caddis | for everyone |
From the Shelter, Saturday:
A 2 yr old chocolate lab X, who instantly fit into Kathy's life.
A 2 yr old chocolate lab X, who instantly fit into Kathy's life.
| RIP, Rocky | for everyone |
Kathy's Best Friend: In her words, but i echo the sentiment:
Rest in peace my best friend Rocky. Rocky died in the evening of 6-11 at the vets of acute pancreas. On Sunday we went to JIms farm and he found a old bone and ate it be for he could be stopped. He started getting sick on Tuesday after noon. Wensday mid morning I took him to the vets where we discovered he had a bad temperature of 106.5. He got hooked up to a I.V. and they ran blood tests which most of it came back bad. The X Ray they took also came back not good. The vet started thinking that it was acute pancreas. They ran a test and it came back positive. The Vet said that if he got threw the first 24 hours his chances would improve but he was very, very sick. I stayed there until about 12:15 p.m. then I had to leave. I got the call from the Vet about 11:50 p.m. As soon as I heard her voice I knew that he was gone. The Vet thinks that he died right after she left after 8:00 p.m. cause she found him in the same position as when she left.
----------------------------------
Good bye my loyal friend. For almost 12 years you have been by my side and with me almost all the time. You went with me to work, you'd go with me at night time if there was errands to be ran. I fixed the back of the truck as comfortable as I could for you with dog beds to lay on and sleep, a bucket kept in the back that had water in it for you to drink, and a rope for you to be hooked on to get in and out of the truck if you wanted too. There was times I'd unhook you so you could run around and play. In the summer when it got really hot I'd unhook you and hose you off with water from the hose to cool you off (which you hated and couldn't understand why I did it). I kept the sliding window open for you in nice weather so you could get fresh air blowing in as we drove down the road. I'd look in my side view mirror to see you with your head out looking in front of us as if to see where we were going or I'd look in the rear view mirror to see you sitting in the back looking up front and threw the front window. When you'd see me walking towards the truck from the side that the sliding window was on you'd stick your head out and I'd stop to pet you.
Never again can I pet you and you put your paw across my arm.
You were one of the most loyal and happy best friends and companion that I could have. I hope you know how much I love you and what you mean to me.
Home and the truck (or as I would call the truck Rocky's moving house) will be empty and lonely with you not here. With you gone there's a emptiness now that can never again be filled. With you gone a part of what made me happy is gone now for ever.
I wish I could've been with you to hold, comfort, pet you and tell you I love you one last time as you went into your final sleep. Maybe you left me the way you did to save me the pain of having to go threw that. Showing and telling me one last time that you love me.
I love you and miss you always. Know that I will always love you and you'll always be with me inside my heart. You can never be replaced nor will you ever be forgotten.
I love you and miss my loyal friend.
| Rocky: Life or Death | for everyone |
Kathy's lab ate something that gave him a massive bacterial infection. He has been in ICU at the vet's for the last 14 hours, and she said she would check on him again at midnight - if he is worse, she will put him to sleep.... At 20:00, his fever had dropped a degree or two, his stools were firming up, and he had done some massive vomiting - hopefully getting rid of the bad stuff, but he is very, very weak...
Vomiting, diarrhea, fever, weakness, since Monday afternoon - guess he ate something bad at the farm Sunday.
Prayers, good thoughts, whatever, appreciated.
Hoping he makes it. Rocky is a special guy, and I don't really want more guilt & loss for a while - still not over Dad or Woof..
Vomiting, diarrhea, fever, weakness, since Monday afternoon - guess he ate something bad at the farm Sunday.
Prayers, good thoughts, whatever, appreciated.
Hoping he makes it. Rocky is a special guy, and I don't really want more guilt & loss for a while - still not over Dad or Woof..
| Yahoo | for everyone |
Appears to be screwing with their Geocity Blog settings.
Hopefully they get past this soon.
Hopefully they get past this soon.
| RIP | for everyone |
Patrick ‘Pat’ Grizzard, 63 Posted: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 - 11:07:37 pm MDT
Patrick “The Leprechaun” Grizzard, 63, passed away Sunday, May 25, 2008, at Brendan House in Kalispell. He was born March 17, 1945, in San Diego. Pat ran track in high school, focusing on the 440 and the 880.
During his career, Pat worked for NASA, hosted a radio talk show in California, and worked at the Blacktail Bookstore in Kalispell.
He moved to Kalispell in 1996 and graduated from Flathead Valley Community College with an associate’s degree.
Pat enjoyed photography and many of his pictures won prizes. In his early years he enjoyed surfing, fishing, camping and loved to travel. He was an avid reader. Pat will be missed.
Pat was preceded in death by his wife, Linda.
He is survived by many dear friends.
Memorial services for Patrick will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, June 7, 2008, at Big Sky Manor, 110 Second Ave. W., in Kalispell.
Johnson-Gloschat Funeral Home and Crematory is caring for Patrick’s family. You are invited to go to www.jgfuneralhome.com to offer condolences and sign Patrick’s guest book.
Patrick “The Leprechaun” Grizzard, 63, passed away Sunday, May 25, 2008, at Brendan House in Kalispell. He was born March 17, 1945, in San Diego. Pat ran track in high school, focusing on the 440 and the 880.
During his career, Pat worked for NASA, hosted a radio talk show in California, and worked at the Blacktail Bookstore in Kalispell.
He moved to Kalispell in 1996 and graduated from Flathead Valley Community College with an associate’s degree.
Pat enjoyed photography and many of his pictures won prizes. In his early years he enjoyed surfing, fishing, camping and loved to travel. He was an avid reader. Pat will be missed.
Pat was preceded in death by his wife, Linda.
He is survived by many dear friends.
Memorial services for Patrick will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, June 7, 2008, at Big Sky Manor, 110 Second Ave. W., in Kalispell.
Johnson-Gloschat Funeral Home and Crematory is caring for Patrick’s family. You are invited to go to www.jgfuneralhome.com to offer condolences and sign Patrick’s guest book.
| NOTE TO SELF: | for everyone |
DO NOT turn off the computer when it is writing to disk....
Reinstalling Windows - again - but at least with all the recent practice it is going faster.
Reinstalling Windows - again - but at least with all the recent practice it is going faster.
| Apologies | for everyone |
for the mental vacation.
Events/emotions over the last six months have distracted me, having trouble concentrating on past events or even current ones, so I have taken some time off to retrench and concentrate on photography again, neglected it since Woof died.
Besides, the weather is too nice to be writing....
Events/emotions over the last six months have distracted me, having trouble concentrating on past events or even current ones, so I have taken some time off to retrench and concentrate on photography again, neglected it since Woof died.
Besides, the weather is too nice to be writing....
| HOM: Flashing Back Again | for everyone |
Writing about that Topcon camera dredged up a few historic points.
Dad's camera was an old Kodak with a bellows lens and a leather & metal case. I still have it....
Paul's old camera was a Mercury II Model CX Half-Frame 35mm Camera, it used 35mm film and we mostly had it developed as slides.
Grandma Striet was interested in photography too, and I still have her old Brownie camera. Mom's last camera was an Ansco ultra-compact Vision Twin-Lens in an offbeat film size.
We found it a few weeks ago with film in it - but it was too old to develop properly.
We took National Geographic magazine when I was in Hgh School, and I spent a lot of time drooling over the ads for the Pentax Spotmatic camera - I got a used one some years later.
------------
And now, from the past...
Did I mention Uncle Tom using a match to check the level of gas in the tank on the hay baler? He was lucky - it wasn't empty! All he lost was eyebrows.
Then there was the time Ian was courting Mom and stopped over to visit the Streits. He was out in the yard visiting with Grandma & Mom & her sisters when their old dog walked up behind him and peed on his leg. I can only imagine his embarrassment.
Vic. He found his neighbor up at the old farm alongside the path, dead of a heart attack. He called it in, and said he would NEVER do that again. He was treated like a murder suspect at the time and never did forgive the LEOs for that.
More later.
TBC
Dad's camera was an old Kodak with a bellows lens and a leather & metal case. I still have it....
Paul's old camera was a Mercury II Model CX Half-Frame 35mm Camera, it used 35mm film and we mostly had it developed as slides.
Grandma Striet was interested in photography too, and I still have her old Brownie camera. Mom's last camera was an Ansco ultra-compact Vision Twin-Lens in an offbeat film size.
We found it a few weeks ago with film in it - but it was too old to develop properly.
We took National Geographic magazine when I was in Hgh School, and I spent a lot of time drooling over the ads for the Pentax Spotmatic camera - I got a used one some years later.
------------
And now, from the past...
Did I mention Uncle Tom using a match to check the level of gas in the tank on the hay baler? He was lucky - it wasn't empty! All he lost was eyebrows.
Then there was the time Ian was courting Mom and stopped over to visit the Streits. He was out in the yard visiting with Grandma & Mom & her sisters when their old dog walked up behind him and peed on his leg. I can only imagine his embarrassment.
Vic. He found his neighbor up at the old farm alongside the path, dead of a heart attack. He called it in, and said he would NEVER do that again. He was treated like a murder suspect at the time and never did forgive the LEOs for that.
More later.
TBC
| HOM: Check! | for everyone |
My picture taking started in grade school, and was an inherited interest; Ian took pictures, and so did Mom. My first camera was a Kodak Brownie in grade school, my first good camera was an old Mercury split frame (72 1/2 size pictures on a 36 exposure roll) that belonged to Uncle Paul.
Mom had kept it for him and used it herself and then I used it, so when Paul came home, I talked Mom into buying him the tape recorder he wanted in trade for the camera.I had a lot of fun and a lot of frustration with it.
Total manual control was all the camera offered, and even when I got an exposure meter I had more bad pictures than good ones.
My first Forest Service paycheck went to Guest's Photo Art for a single lens reflex camera with automatic exposure control - a Beseler Topcon Auto 100.
To Quote the brochure:
Congratulations, on your choice of the BESELER TOPCON AUTO 100 camera which has been designed by our engineers and optical scientists to give an ideal camera fulfilling the following basic requirements:--
1. Single lens reflex--for viewing and focusing of the exact subject image as it will be captured on the film.
2. Electric Eye automation--for automatically setting the correct exposure to the camera simply by pointing it at the subject.
3. Complete lens interchangeability--for changing from the standard to the wide-angle or telephoto as the requirements of the picture may demand.
4. Superior UV lens coating--for producing crisper black-and-white shots and true-to life color pictures.
But, besides these basic requirements, the camera also incorporates all the complicated mechanism that make picture-taking completely automatic, such as:--
1. Fully automatic instant re-opening lens diaphragm action--for holding the lens at wide aperture, for view-focusing ease, but stopping it down automatically to the selected aperture for the shutter action and then re-opening it once more to wide aperture.
2. Quick-as-a-wink mirror action--which, in coupled action with the automatic lens diaphragm action, swings the mirror up and out of the way for shooting and then snaps it down once more, quick-as-a-wink, for view focusing.
3. Single stroke film winding lever action-- not only advances the film one frame, but advances the exposure counter, charges the shutter and sets up the automatic lens diaphragm action.
4. Automatic re-setting additive exposure counter.
5. Automatic pop-up rewind button.
And, as an additional bonus, the camera also has:--
1. Complete electric eye automation with all interchangeable lenses.
2. Special UV filter effect on all interchangeable lenses.
3. Aperture scale visible in finder, even with electric-eye automation.
My second paycheck went for a pair of White (Brand - not color!) boots for work.
Priorities!
TBC
Mom had kept it for him and used it herself and then I used it, so when Paul came home, I talked Mom into buying him the tape recorder he wanted in trade for the camera.I had a lot of fun and a lot of frustration with it.
Total manual control was all the camera offered, and even when I got an exposure meter I had more bad pictures than good ones.
My first Forest Service paycheck went to Guest's Photo Art for a single lens reflex camera with automatic exposure control - a Beseler Topcon Auto 100.
To Quote the brochure:
Congratulations, on your choice of the BESELER TOPCON AUTO 100 camera which has been designed by our engineers and optical scientists to give an ideal camera fulfilling the following basic requirements:--
1. Single lens reflex--for viewing and focusing of the exact subject image as it will be captured on the film.
2. Electric Eye automation--for automatically setting the correct exposure to the camera simply by pointing it at the subject.
3. Complete lens interchangeability--for changing from the standard to the wide-angle or telephoto as the requirements of the picture may demand.
4. Superior UV lens coating--for producing crisper black-and-white shots and true-to life color pictures.
But, besides these basic requirements, the camera also incorporates all the complicated mechanism that make picture-taking completely automatic, such as:--
1. Fully automatic instant re-opening lens diaphragm action--for holding the lens at wide aperture, for view-focusing ease, but stopping it down automatically to the selected aperture for the shutter action and then re-opening it once more to wide aperture.
2. Quick-as-a-wink mirror action--which, in coupled action with the automatic lens diaphragm action, swings the mirror up and out of the way for shooting and then snaps it down once more, quick-as-a-wink, for view focusing.
3. Single stroke film winding lever action-- not only advances the film one frame, but advances the exposure counter, charges the shutter and sets up the automatic lens diaphragm action.
4. Automatic re-setting additive exposure counter.
5. Automatic pop-up rewind button.
And, as an additional bonus, the camera also has:--
1. Complete electric eye automation with all interchangeable lenses.
2. Special UV filter effect on all interchangeable lenses.
3. Aperture scale visible in finder, even with electric-eye automation.
My second paycheck went for a pair of White (Brand - not color!) boots for work.
Priorities!
TBC
| HOM: Close | for everyone |
The closest call I had with the USFS job didn't happen on the job.
Several of us carpooled, and one fine day the guy we were riding with got fired.
Like a lot of folks, he took his anger out on the car and the road, traveling fast and cutting things closer than he should. He missed turning south at the Blue Moon so we flew over to the US-93 junction. The driver - also named Jim - came very, very, close to a head-on when he tried to pass a car and misjudged the traffic and the scare got him to slow down. But it was VERY close...
Another car-pooling incident that sticks in memory was funny. Kirby Jacobson was dozing in the back seat & I was riding in front, and out of boredom idly pulled open the seat belt latch and let it snap shut. Instantly Kirby was awake and leaning over the seat going "Beer?" "Beer?". I guess it sounded like a pop-top. anyway, he was disappointed.
We rode in two 4-door crew cab pickups, catch as catch can, no assigned seating. This worked pretty well till a windy day, a front seat passenger with a passion for Copenhagen and a crabby back seat passenger who liked having his window open.
Ever time the chewer spit the guy in back had it blown into his face, and the chewer didn't quit till he was told that even if it cost him his job, the back-seat guy was going to bust his jaw for him.
The funny sequel happened a few days later when the Copen-spitter, sitting in back this time, decided to empty a load out the window - and forgot it was rolled up! He got a lot of static over that, beside a faceful of his own slobber and the job of cleaning the truck.
We saw a lot of game on the trips in and out from the thinning areas - muleys, whitetails, bear, fox, and moose. No elk though, and no Grizzly.
A few times guys brought rifles along, with the understanding that if they shot any game, they had the day off without pay. Times were freeer then...
TBC
Several of us carpooled, and one fine day the guy we were riding with got fired.
Like a lot of folks, he took his anger out on the car and the road, traveling fast and cutting things closer than he should. He missed turning south at the Blue Moon so we flew over to the US-93 junction. The driver - also named Jim - came very, very, close to a head-on when he tried to pass a car and misjudged the traffic and the scare got him to slow down. But it was VERY close...
Another car-pooling incident that sticks in memory was funny. Kirby Jacobson was dozing in the back seat & I was riding in front, and out of boredom idly pulled open the seat belt latch and let it snap shut. Instantly Kirby was awake and leaning over the seat going "Beer?" "Beer?". I guess it sounded like a pop-top. anyway, he was disappointed.
We rode in two 4-door crew cab pickups, catch as catch can, no assigned seating. This worked pretty well till a windy day, a front seat passenger with a passion for Copenhagen and a crabby back seat passenger who liked having his window open.
Ever time the chewer spit the guy in back had it blown into his face, and the chewer didn't quit till he was told that even if it cost him his job, the back-seat guy was going to bust his jaw for him.
The funny sequel happened a few days later when the Copen-spitter, sitting in back this time, decided to empty a load out the window - and forgot it was rolled up! He got a lot of static over that, beside a faceful of his own slobber and the job of cleaning the truck.
We saw a lot of game on the trips in and out from the thinning areas - muleys, whitetails, bear, fox, and moose. No elk though, and no Grizzly.
A few times guys brought rifles along, with the understanding that if they shot any game, they had the day off without pay. Times were freeer then...
TBC
| HOM: Thinner | for everyone |
I guess it is a bit of serendipity that thinning thins the thinner.
(Hmm, so if you become a treehugger, you "Repent, and thin no more!"???)
Sorry - that sorta slipped out. Anyway, carrying a saw, a gallon of fuel, a quart of blade oil, file, plug tool, fire extinguisher, water and yourself around was great exercise. We almost always started thinning from the bottom of a project, and as the work advanced the climb to the top got longer and sometimes harder.
All those trees that were felled had to be climbed over to get to and from the truck and the work, though sometimes the foremen would clear out a central path up to speed things up. One of my more enlightening moments was when I was in the midst of clambering over the nearly waist deep layer of stuff we had cut down and thinking how impassable it made the slope when I looked up and saw a BIG bull moose.
He was in the woods and moving at a fast trot, and when he hit the thinning area he never slowed down, crossing it diagonally from bottom to top - those long legs unerringly carried him through the downed stuff like it was open road. I was envious!
Heat was always an enemy too, and we took salt tabs like they were vitamins. The occasional rainy day wasn't much help - you either ignored the rain and got soaked or wore rain gear and got soaked - from sweat!
Hot weather also brought the yellow jackets and little sweat bees out in droves. It wasn't unusual to see a sawyer suddenly take off at a run from the tree he had been cutting and working elsewhere till the nest he had cut into settled back down or he had used the fire extinguisher to kill the hornets.
I forgot to mention travel time. We would meet at the old District Office in Columbia Falls at 0700, and the hour travel time from the office to the work area was unpaid - our day officially started at 0800. To balance this, we would knock off at 1600 and travel at USFS expense for the hour back out to C. Falls, arriving at 1700.
There were some hazards & nuisances on the job. Dead snags standing in the area were a real hazard, though not common. These widowmakers had a bad habit of falling for no known reason and with no warning - even Vic got hit by them twice in his career.
(Vic. Struck and terribly hurt buy a snag in the early 1960's, he fought his way to recovery and went back into the woods. He worked as a sawyer till he was at an age when most logger had long retired, but finally decided to call it quits.
He announced that this particular day was his last one, and that he was hanging up his saw at noon. Noon came, and he decided to cut one last tree, and he was bucking it up when a snag behind him fell and crushed him again. Irony.)
Misjudging the lean of a tree or a slight gust of wind could cause your saw blade to get pinched in the cut. If the tree was small enough or you had good leverage you could muscle the trunk back till you could slip your saw out, but sometimes you had to go get someone else and have them saw the tree off a bit higher so you could get your saw out. This backfired on me once - I was helping the next guy free his saw, but I goofed someway and the log slipped off the stump onto his saw, bending the blade and breaking the handle. My bad!
Cutting the trees off at the very-low height the job called for meant sometimes hitting a rock, and that meant stopping to sharpen the chain, one job I never mastered.
I have already mention the hazard of trees whose trajectory you miscalculate and that hang up in other trees. Sometimes you could muscle them loose, sometimes you could knock them loose with another tree, sometimes you had to cut their trunks in half. Cutting a trunk that was suspended at the ends and hanging free in the middle meant cutting from the bottom side of the trunk so that as it settled the kerf would open and not squeeze the blade as it would if you cut from the top. It made for interesting logistics!
Another nasty habit out-of-plumb trees had was splitting vertically when you had them half cut. The split would start on the inside edge of your cut and run up the trunk for 5 to 10 feet, then the tree would hinge on the top of the split and the butt would kick back. The resulting stump looked like a barber chair and this is what gave the event the name of "barberchair". If you were in the wrong spot the damage from the kick-back could be serious, which is why you always stood to the side of the tree you were cutting if you could.
TBC
(Hmm, so if you become a treehugger, you "Repent, and thin no more!"???)
Sorry - that sorta slipped out. Anyway, carrying a saw, a gallon of fuel, a quart of blade oil, file, plug tool, fire extinguisher, water and yourself around was great exercise. We almost always started thinning from the bottom of a project, and as the work advanced the climb to the top got longer and sometimes harder.
All those trees that were felled had to be climbed over to get to and from the truck and the work, though sometimes the foremen would clear out a central path up to speed things up. One of my more enlightening moments was when I was in the midst of clambering over the nearly waist deep layer of stuff we had cut down and thinking how impassable it made the slope when I looked up and saw a BIG bull moose.
He was in the woods and moving at a fast trot, and when he hit the thinning area he never slowed down, crossing it diagonally from bottom to top - those long legs unerringly carried him through the downed stuff like it was open road. I was envious!
Heat was always an enemy too, and we took salt tabs like they were vitamins. The occasional rainy day wasn't much help - you either ignored the rain and got soaked or wore rain gear and got soaked - from sweat!
Hot weather also brought the yellow jackets and little sweat bees out in droves. It wasn't unusual to see a sawyer suddenly take off at a run from the tree he had been cutting and working elsewhere till the nest he had cut into settled back down or he had used the fire extinguisher to kill the hornets.
I forgot to mention travel time. We would meet at the old District Office in Columbia Falls at 0700, and the hour travel time from the office to the work area was unpaid - our day officially started at 0800. To balance this, we would knock off at 1600 and travel at USFS expense for the hour back out to C. Falls, arriving at 1700.
There were some hazards & nuisances on the job. Dead snags standing in the area were a real hazard, though not common. These widowmakers had a bad habit of falling for no known reason and with no warning - even Vic got hit by them twice in his career.
(Vic. Struck and terribly hurt buy a snag in the early 1960's, he fought his way to recovery and went back into the woods. He worked as a sawyer till he was at an age when most logger had long retired, but finally decided to call it quits.
He announced that this particular day was his last one, and that he was hanging up his saw at noon. Noon came, and he decided to cut one last tree, and he was bucking it up when a snag behind him fell and crushed him again. Irony.)
Misjudging the lean of a tree or a slight gust of wind could cause your saw blade to get pinched in the cut. If the tree was small enough or you had good leverage you could muscle the trunk back till you could slip your saw out, but sometimes you had to go get someone else and have them saw the tree off a bit higher so you could get your saw out. This backfired on me once - I was helping the next guy free his saw, but I goofed someway and the log slipped off the stump onto his saw, bending the blade and breaking the handle. My bad!
Cutting the trees off at the very-low height the job called for meant sometimes hitting a rock, and that meant stopping to sharpen the chain, one job I never mastered.
I have already mention the hazard of trees whose trajectory you miscalculate and that hang up in other trees. Sometimes you could muscle them loose, sometimes you could knock them loose with another tree, sometimes you had to cut their trunks in half. Cutting a trunk that was suspended at the ends and hanging free in the middle meant cutting from the bottom side of the trunk so that as it settled the kerf would open and not squeeze the blade as it would if you cut from the top. It made for interesting logistics!
Another nasty habit out-of-plumb trees had was splitting vertically when you had them half cut. The split would start on the inside edge of your cut and run up the trunk for 5 to 10 feet, then the tree would hinge on the top of the split and the butt would kick back. The resulting stump looked like a barber chair and this is what gave the event the name of "barberchair". If you were in the wrong spot the damage from the kick-back could be serious, which is why you always stood to the side of the tree you were cutting if you could.
TBC
| HOM: Larry & Pat | for everyone |
1964?
When the flood first hit, Pat, myself, Del Hutton and Red Rogers were in a car pool to go back and forth to Big Creek. We left on a Sunday evening just when all hell broke loose. The section of road just south of the station slid into the river and we were all stranded there till that section of road could be pioneered in and rebuilt.
For the first few days all we--all of us--did was snag garbage cans that came floating by the station office. Every day around noon a Marine flying banana would fly real close to the river checking it out. Then when the water went down Pat and I took off for the brush checking roads and bridges. That summer went by real fast. Joe Pomievich was the Forest Supervisor then and he tried to get me detailed to Spotted Bear for trail repair but our boss said no that he had me humping it there at Glacier View. Pat and I would leave right after breakfast, in the morning, and not get back till last call at summer-time.
Well, we spent most of that summer on flood damage repair--like cleaning debris from under bridges. We had two Gyppo loggers--the Herzog brothers and their self-loader following us around like a couple of puppy dogs. They were the ones that I mentioned earlier about our cheating on our green slip sales. We treated them good and they did like-wise.
The younger of the two finally moved over to White Sulphur and I used him on almost of my dozer piling contracts there. Pat and I traveled every road on the district that summer cleaning out culverts and using the Herzogs to clear out logs and stuff from under bridges. I have run across some colored slides of all of the 4 of us in action on some of the bridges.
Did I mention that Bill Anderson was our cook?
When ever we were late for meals he would stand over us and his stub of a cigar would move from side to side in his mouth and that was a warning sign that we were in trouble. We all had our SPOTS at the table and ABSOLUTELY, ABSOLUTELY NO TALKING AT MEALTIME. I got in trouble only once and that was enough. It was alright to ask for the spuds or whatnot but that was it. I sat next to Vance Conn and Pat sat next to me. Whenever we had steaks for supper Bill would put a little bowl of steak drippin's right next to me and Vance's plates 'cause he knew we liked to slop the drippin's. The rest of the crew thought we were gross but damn that was good with Bill's homemade bread dunked in that stuff.
I don't know if you knew or not but Hank Hays had replaced Harold Howard when Harold took a transfer to Alaska.
The first time I met Hank was when we had all gotten out of the brush from laying out that Cyclone Lake timber sale and I was setting in the office plotting out a cutting and this voice from just behind me said "Do you think you know what you are doing?" I whirled around and here was Hank standing there in a FS suit and tie looking really serious. Later he and I went up Coal Creek on a little show-me trip for me to show him around and he asked me all sorts of questions. I found out later on that he made some damn fine wine.
Did I ever tell you about our camp up at Cyclone Lake. Well, there was me, Fred Young, Pat, Dick Lukes and Bob Wynecoop. There were two tents tied together. The front one was the office/chow hall and the back was where we had our bags. One night, unbeknownst to all of us a big bull moose stopped by to see what we were and he stuck his head in the tent-BAAAAAAAAAD mistake. Well that scared the beegaysus out of him and he reared back and of course his big rack got hung up in the tent. Then he panicked and took off backwards-with our cooking fly and our bedroom-off through the brush. There were 4 green inchworms hauling ass back in the opposite direction off into the brush. After it was all over all we could do was lay there on the ground and laugh our butts off. We spent the rest of the day and part of the day after that going out through the brush gathering up our camp. The worst part of it was-that damn moose hung around us for several days.
I just thought of this story so as time goes on be prepared for more. I was just reading your articles that I sent you and when you mentioned Henry Hays, it rang a bell.
This is one for the books. Pat and I were sent, by Red Rogers, to a small smoke chaser fire one day. Pat, in his careful cunning, had a smoke chase map that dated from the 1920's or 30's with him. He like that map as it showed place names that had been forgotten over time. When he called in our location to Red, the creek name that he used was "Kinney-mikki Creek". Of course that did not show on Red's big district map and that threw him in a tizzy/frenzy trying to find it. When Pat and I got back, there was Red tapping his foot and saying "Where in the Hell is Kinni-mikki creek. So ol Pat digs out his ancient smoke chaser map and showed Red.
Well, since then, I think that name is now back on the maps for the North Fork but am not certain. About all I can say about Pat is that you had to be thinking about 4 jumps ahead of him every day and getting up a wee bit earlier than he would every day to be able to stay with him. I do not think that there was ever a time that I was able to outsmart him.
The day that Pat died, I was going to go to town to visit with him as I had called the day before to see if he would be home so that we could set down and reminisce so was very sad when he passed. I didn't get to say goodbye.
When the flood first hit, Pat, myself, Del Hutton and Red Rogers were in a car pool to go back and forth to Big Creek. We left on a Sunday evening just when all hell broke loose. The section of road just south of the station slid into the river and we were all stranded there till that section of road could be pioneered in and rebuilt.
For the first few days all we--all of us--did was snag garbage cans that came floating by the station office. Every day around noon a Marine flying banana would fly real close to the river checking it out. Then when the water went down Pat and I took off for the brush checking roads and bridges. That summer went by real fast. Joe Pomievich was the Forest Supervisor then and he tried to get me detailed to Spotted Bear for trail repair but our boss said no that he had me humping it there at Glacier View. Pat and I would leave right after breakfast, in the morning, and not get back till last call at summer-time.
Well, we spent most of that summer on flood damage repair--like cleaning debris from under bridges. We had two Gyppo loggers--the Herzog brothers and their self-loader following us around like a couple of puppy dogs. They were the ones that I mentioned earlier about our cheating on our green slip sales. We treated them good and they did like-wise.
The younger of the two finally moved over to White Sulphur and I used him on almost of my dozer piling contracts there. Pat and I traveled every road on the district that summer cleaning out culverts and using the Herzogs to clear out logs and stuff from under bridges. I have run across some colored slides of all of the 4 of us in action on some of the bridges.
Did I mention that Bill Anderson was our cook?
When ever we were late for meals he would stand over us and his stub of a cigar would move from side to side in his mouth and that was a warning sign that we were in trouble. We all had our SPOTS at the table and ABSOLUTELY, ABSOLUTELY NO TALKING AT MEALTIME. I got in trouble only once and that was enough. It was alright to ask for the spuds or whatnot but that was it. I sat next to Vance Conn and Pat sat next to me. Whenever we had steaks for supper Bill would put a little bowl of steak drippin's right next to me and Vance's plates 'cause he knew we liked to slop the drippin's. The rest of the crew thought we were gross but damn that was good with Bill's homemade bread dunked in that stuff.
I don't know if you knew or not but Hank Hays had replaced Harold Howard when Harold took a transfer to Alaska.
The first time I met Hank was when we had all gotten out of the brush from laying out that Cyclone Lake timber sale and I was setting in the office plotting out a cutting and this voice from just behind me said "Do you think you know what you are doing?" I whirled around and here was Hank standing there in a FS suit and tie looking really serious. Later he and I went up Coal Creek on a little show-me trip for me to show him around and he asked me all sorts of questions. I found out later on that he made some damn fine wine.
Did I ever tell you about our camp up at Cyclone Lake. Well, there was me, Fred Young, Pat, Dick Lukes and Bob Wynecoop. There were two tents tied together. The front one was the office/chow hall and the back was where we had our bags. One night, unbeknownst to all of us a big bull moose stopped by to see what we were and he stuck his head in the tent-BAAAAAAAAAD mistake. Well that scared the beegaysus out of him and he reared back and of course his big rack got hung up in the tent. Then he panicked and took off backwards-with our cooking fly and our bedroom-off through the brush. There were 4 green inchworms hauling ass back in the opposite direction off into the brush. After it was all over all we could do was lay there on the ground and laugh our butts off. We spent the rest of the day and part of the day after that going out through the brush gathering up our camp. The worst part of it was-that damn moose hung around us for several days.
I just thought of this story so as time goes on be prepared for more. I was just reading your articles that I sent you and when you mentioned Henry Hays, it rang a bell.
This is one for the books. Pat and I were sent, by Red Rogers, to a small smoke chaser fire one day. Pat, in his careful cunning, had a smoke chase map that dated from the 1920's or 30's with him. He like that map as it showed place names that had been forgotten over time. When he called in our location to Red, the creek name that he used was "Kinney-mikki Creek". Of course that did not show on Red's big district map and that threw him in a tizzy/frenzy trying to find it. When Pat and I got back, there was Red tapping his foot and saying "Where in the Hell is Kinni-mikki creek. So ol Pat digs out his ancient smoke chaser map and showed Red.
Well, since then, I think that name is now back on the maps for the North Fork but am not certain. About all I can say about Pat is that you had to be thinking about 4 jumps ahead of him every day and getting up a wee bit earlier than he would every day to be able to stay with him. I do not think that there was ever a time that I was able to outsmart him.
The day that Pat died, I was going to go to town to visit with him as I had called the day before to see if he would be home so that we could set down and reminisce so was very sad when he passed. I didn't get to say goodbye.
| HOM: Smokin' | for everyone |
This is a little out of order - more thinning info coming soon - but this just surfaced so I better put it down in writing now.
I guess it was a Sunday in August when Paul & I decided to go fishing.
We got our gear together and went down to Phillips' (Now Jellar's) where we kept the old 14' aluminum boat and 5.5hp Evinrude, hauled the stuff down the path I dug out of the bank, and were almost ready to go when Dad drove up.
He hopped out and told me I wasn't going fishing, and for explanation pointed north at the cloud of smoke towering out of the North Fork. Forest Fire, and the call had gone out to all the crews to report in.
(This, of course, was in the days when anybody who had boots & gloves and two arms and two legs was considered capable of fighting fire. No classes, no endurance tests, no selectivity, and little politically correct attention to safety. You were assumed to be responsible for your own safety.)
I went home, changed, grabbed my stuff and headed for Columbia Falls.
I got there after most of the crew did and they were already on the fire, so I rode up with and worked with a different crew and was introduced to a Pulaski and the art of digging fireline - 18" wide and all the way to mineral soil, and throw the dirt back onto the fire.
This was the era when getting the fire out was rated as a little more important than crew safety, so we were right at the edge of the fire in the middle of the heat and smoke. It made for interesting work; when a burning snag fell in front of you, you detoured the fireline around it and keep going.
They pulled us off the line at dusk and sent us to a fire camp they had set up nearby for a quick meal and a sleeping bag.
The most popular feature in the camp was Bill Anderson's kitchen area. Armys and firefighters need food to fuel exertion, and Bill supplied it with both quality & quantity even in camp.
He set a big old-fashioned tub up on rocks, built a fire under it, then dumped in water and a couple of pounds of coffee. He kept the temperature at a very low boil, and normal procedure was to just scoop out a cupful as you walked by. Hygenic, no. Efficient, yes. And nobody got sick from it. Or complained.
When the tub started getting low, Bill would add more water & more coffee to the existing brew, so as the days went by the coffee kept getting stronger and the level of the grounds kept getting closer to the surface. It jump-started my addiction!
The next morning, I had one of those serendipitous events that have made my life interesting.
I was heading for breakfast when I walked by the radio tent and one the guys from my crew was there so I stopped to visit for a minute.This is when Ike Weaver, the FNF radio man, asked me if I knew how to run a radio.
Being congenitally lazy, mildly dishonest and sensing an opportunity, I said I sure did. (LIE!) I instantly became the assistant radio operator! Since I was really interested in radio and really didn't like the fireline, I learned fast.
Motivation is the key to success at anything!
I spent time on other fires and firelines that summer, though. One evening Earl Fortine, another guy & I were put on a small fire that had been contained. We were relieving the regular crew and just patrolling the perimeter when a small tree about 50 yards outside the fireline and down the hill blazed up with a roar. We ran down, I started cutting off the burning limbs and the other two stomped them out on the ground. It only took a couple of minutes, but they were kind of exciting - the threat of having the fire take off again was a real spur.
All of this was good training for next summer, when a big chunk of the North Fork went up in the fire of 1967.
TBC
I guess it was a Sunday in August when Paul & I decided to go fishing.
We got our gear together and went down to Phillips' (Now Jellar's) where we kept the old 14' aluminum boat and 5.5hp Evinrude, hauled the stuff down the path I dug out of the bank, and were almost ready to go when Dad drove up.
He hopped out and told me I wasn't going fishing, and for explanation pointed north at the cloud of smoke towering out of the North Fork. Forest Fire, and the call had gone out to all the crews to report in.
(This, of course, was in the days when anybody who had boots & gloves and two arms and two legs was considered capable of fighting fire. No classes, no endurance tests, no selectivity, and little politically correct attention to safety. You were assumed to be responsible for your own safety.)
I went home, changed, grabbed my stuff and headed for Columbia Falls.
I got there after most of the crew did and they were already on the fire, so I rode up with and worked with a different crew and was introduced to a Pulaski and the art of digging fireline - 18" wide and all the way to mineral soil, and throw the dirt back onto the fire.
This was the era when getting the fire out was rated as a little more important than crew safety, so we were right at the edge of the fire in the middle of the heat and smoke. It made for interesting work; when a burning snag fell in front of you, you detoured the fireline around it and keep going.
They pulled us off the line at dusk and sent us to a fire camp they had set up nearby for a quick meal and a sleeping bag.
The most popular feature in the camp was Bill Anderson's kitchen area. Armys and firefighters need food to fuel exertion, and Bill supplied it with both quality & quantity even in camp.
He set a big old-fashioned tub up on rocks, built a fire under it, then dumped in water and a couple of pounds of coffee. He kept the temperature at a very low boil, and normal procedure was to just scoop out a cupful as you walked by. Hygenic, no. Efficient, yes. And nobody got sick from it. Or complained.
When the tub started getting low, Bill would add more water & more coffee to the existing brew, so as the days went by the coffee kept getting stronger and the level of the grounds kept getting closer to the surface. It jump-started my addiction!
The next morning, I had one of those serendipitous events that have made my life interesting.
I was heading for breakfast when I walked by the radio tent and one the guys from my crew was there so I stopped to visit for a minute.This is when Ike Weaver, the FNF radio man, asked me if I knew how to run a radio.
Being congenitally lazy, mildly dishonest and sensing an opportunity, I said I sure did. (LIE!) I instantly became the assistant radio operator! Since I was really interested in radio and really didn't like the fireline, I learned fast.
Motivation is the key to success at anything!
I spent time on other fires and firelines that summer, though. One evening Earl Fortine, another guy & I were put on a small fire that had been contained. We were relieving the regular crew and just patrolling the perimeter when a small tree about 50 yards outside the fireline and down the hill blazed up with a roar. We ran down, I started cutting off the burning limbs and the other two stomped them out on the ground. It only took a couple of minutes, but they were kind of exciting - the threat of having the fire take off again was a real spur.
All of this was good training for next summer, when a big chunk of the North Fork went up in the fire of 1967.
TBC
| HOM: Mo' Pat | for everyone |
Once again, from Larry O.
-------------
Another one that I just thought about was one that he pulled on me once but lots on other dummies. That was, when laying out a cutting unit he would say you go ahead and I'll meet you on the other side and if you get there first, you drive a stake and if I get there first, I'll pull it and then he would take off and leave you standing there wondering what in the hell just happened. You only fell for that once and it really made your face get red. He sure delighted in doing things like that.
--------------
Pat was a delightful guy. He & Caroline always shared the holidays with us, and even after Pat quit driving at night Dad would go and get them for the meal and then take them home.
I always had great respect for him.
TBC
-------------
Another one that I just thought about was one that he pulled on me once but lots on other dummies. That was, when laying out a cutting unit he would say you go ahead and I'll meet you on the other side and if you get there first, you drive a stake and if I get there first, I'll pull it and then he would take off and leave you standing there wondering what in the hell just happened. You only fell for that once and it really made your face get red. He sure delighted in doing things like that.
--------------
Pat was a delightful guy. He & Caroline always shared the holidays with us, and even after Pat quit driving at night Dad would go and get them for the meal and then take them home.
I always had great respect for him.
TBC
| HOM: USFS | for everyone |
OK, it's me again, one more Pat story, though.
At one time, Pat was noted for two things - a luxurious handlebar moustache and a penchant for practical jokes.
In the days when lookouts were taken up to their mountain tops by horseback and pack animal, most of their summer supply of food went up with them.
A buddy of Pat's had his food stock at Big Creek ready to be packed when Pat discovered it - and spent most of the night with razor blade and glue swapping the labels between all the cans.
This made for a summer of food-based "Russian Roulette" for Pat's friend in the lookout - open any two cans and hope one was a fruit and one a vegetable... It also gave him time to discover the culprit and plan revenge.
Pat was finishing up a lunch break by napping in a chair at Big Creek when his friend tiptoed in with a pair of scissors and removed half of Pat's pride-and-joy moustache...
..........................
Big Creek. Bill Anderson was cook there, and he was the master of his profession and his domain. I never saw him without an apron on and a well-chewed cigar in one corner of his mouth.
Bill had one iron-clad rule for meals - NO CONVERSATION! You could ask for something to be passed or for a refill, but that was it. I guess he had seen too many meals interrupted by arguments that evolved into fights, which made for a lot of extra waste & work for him as well as problems for the non-combatants.
Reaching in front of someone else was a no-no too, usually you got a swift jab from a fork in the hand of the person whose space you invaded.
..........................
Anyway, the fun-filled days as Pat's deputy ended. Hard hat, gloves, and a chainsaw were the tools from then on, Earl Fortine and Dick Gage were my new bosses, and I got introduced to a chainsaw and started learning how to cut trees down.
The chainsaws were fairly small ones using a "brush bar" or "bow bar" instead of the standard bar - the brush bars were an elliptical loop with an open center and were supposed to be faster than a standard bar for cutting smaller diameter wood.
After a fire, forests tend to grow back in a thick tangle sometimes so dense it was called dog hair, with many small trees competing for nutrients and sunlight. The TSI crew job was to go in and take out most of the trees, leaving fairly evenly spaced trees ten to fifteen feet apart that had room to grow. The felled trees were left to rot into the duff on the forest floor.
Obviously, most of the stuff we cut was pretty small, but some of it was was more than a foot or so through at the butt. Me, being me, managed to get into a few "situations".
The crew would line out along the bottom of the stand and cut uphill, with each person having a strip to work in. The first problem I had was leaving a tree I cut hanging in a tree in the neighbor's strip. This is a non-no! It is akin to a man-trap set to fall on someone. (There is a reason they are called "deadfalls".)
After I recovered from the discipline I got from the neighbor, I went on to other mistakes.
I cut a tree that went the wrong way and hung up in a tree on my strip. Okay. I went over a bit and cut another tree, planning that it would hit the hung tree and knock it loose so both would go down.Oops - it hung on the tree that I was trying to knock loose.
Okay, here we go - a bigger tree on the other side, one I maybe should leave, but it looks like it has the heft and vector to knock both the hung trees down.
Bet you saw this coming! IT HUNG TOO!
Three trees that have been cut off but are hanging on an uncut tree, swaying in the breeze, waiting to fall on someone.
It seemed like the only good solution was to drop the supporting tree and the only drawback was getting out of the way of the mess when it fell.
I did. I lived. For once in my life I was TOTALLY motivated to move fast. Luckily no one saw that little fiasco.
Then there was the day I was sawing on a steep pitch of hillside, slipped, and brought my knee up into the saw. I still have a scar from that...
My mouth earned me a few scars too. Dick Gage was built kind of stocky, and once he was describing the car he rebuilt as having a heavy rear end, and I asked him if he was referring to the car or himself. Bad move!
More TSI later.
TBC
At one time, Pat was noted for two things - a luxurious handlebar moustache and a penchant for practical jokes.
In the days when lookouts were taken up to their mountain tops by horseback and pack animal, most of their summer supply of food went up with them.
A buddy of Pat's had his food stock at Big Creek ready to be packed when Pat discovered it - and spent most of the night with razor blade and glue swapping the labels between all the cans.
This made for a summer of food-based "Russian Roulette" for Pat's friend in the lookout - open any two cans and hope one was a fruit and one a vegetable... It also gave him time to discover the culprit and plan revenge.
Pat was finishing up a lunch break by napping in a chair at Big Creek when his friend tiptoed in with a pair of scissors and removed half of Pat's pride-and-joy moustache...
..........................
Big Creek. Bill Anderson was cook there, and he was the master of his profession and his domain. I never saw him without an apron on and a well-chewed cigar in one corner of his mouth.
Bill had one iron-clad rule for meals - NO CONVERSATION! You could ask for something to be passed or for a refill, but that was it. I guess he had seen too many meals interrupted by arguments that evolved into fights, which made for a lot of extra waste & work for him as well as problems for the non-combatants.
Reaching in front of someone else was a no-no too, usually you got a swift jab from a fork in the hand of the person whose space you invaded.
..........................
Anyway, the fun-filled days as Pat's deputy ended. Hard hat, gloves, and a chainsaw were the tools from then on, Earl Fortine and Dick Gage were my new bosses, and I got introduced to a chainsaw and started learning how to cut trees down.
The chainsaws were fairly small ones using a "brush bar" or "bow bar" instead of the standard bar - the brush bars were an elliptical loop with an open center and were supposed to be faster than a standard bar for cutting smaller diameter wood.
After a fire, forests tend to grow back in a thick tangle sometimes so dense it was called dog hair, with many small trees competing for nutrients and sunlight. The TSI crew job was to go in and take out most of the trees, leaving fairly evenly spaced trees ten to fifteen feet apart that had room to grow. The felled trees were left to rot into the duff on the forest floor.
Obviously, most of the stuff we cut was pretty small, but some of it was was more than a foot or so through at the butt. Me, being me, managed to get into a few "situations".
The crew would line out along the bottom of the stand and cut uphill, with each person having a strip to work in. The first problem I had was leaving a tree I cut hanging in a tree in the neighbor's strip. This is a non-no! It is akin to a man-trap set to fall on someone. (There is a reason they are called "deadfalls".)
After I recovered from the discipline I got from the neighbor, I went on to other mistakes.
I cut a tree that went the wrong way and hung up in a tree on my strip. Okay. I went over a bit and cut another tree, planning that it would hit the hung tree and knock it loose so both would go down.Oops - it hung on the tree that I was trying to knock loose.
Okay, here we go - a bigger tree on the other side, one I maybe should leave, but it looks like it has the heft and vector to knock both the hung trees down.
Bet you saw this coming! IT HUNG TOO!
Three trees that have been cut off but are hanging on an uncut tree, swaying in the breeze, waiting to fall on someone.
It seemed like the only good solution was to drop the supporting tree and the only drawback was getting out of the way of the mess when it fell.
I did. I lived. For once in my life I was TOTALLY motivated to move fast. Luckily no one saw that little fiasco.
Then there was the day I was sawing on a steep pitch of hillside, slipped, and brought my knee up into the saw. I still have a scar from that...
My mouth earned me a few scars too. Dick Gage was built kind of stocky, and once he was describing the car he rebuilt as having a heavy rear end, and I asked him if he was referring to the car or himself. Bad move!
More TSI later.
TBC
| HOM: Cheating | for everyone |
This post is All Pat, compliments of Larry O'Connell, who worked with Pat much more than I did and has more stories of him, so, HEEEEEEERRE"S LARRY!!!!
---------------------
Well here we go with story number one.
He always used to tell me that when he had worked for the BPR (Bureau of Public Roads) that he had got the supervisor so mad at him for goofing off and messing things up that he would leave nasty little reminders along the survey routes.
So one day he and I were working on some Salvage Sales and we came upon a survey stake that had "POT" written on the top of it. Now normally you would look at that and think that meant "Point of Tangency" but not ol' Pat. Nope, he said that had been a note that was left by the Engineers and it was addressed to him and it meant "Piss on Taylor". That is story number one.
When he told these stories to folks that one glass eye would really twinkle. Like the times that we would come in from the field at the end of the day and the Timber Staff man (Jim Emerson-aka Slew-foot) would ask us how things went and Pat, with that twinkle, would tell him "Boy we really stuck a Fat Hog today." And poor ol' Jim would act like he would bite a chunk out of his desk.
Story Number three was when my cousin-Johnny Taylor's mother Edith worked in the TM section in the SO and she was always the one that would check over our "Green Slip" sales for errors and whatnot. Years later, before she passed away, she told me that she just knew that Pat and I were cheating on the prices we arrived at on our sales but could never catch us at it. So I told her that was simple. Pat and I knew who we were selling timber to and we would just arrive at a fair price and work backwards from there.
She threw her hands up in the air and exclaimed that was what she had figured but could never prove it and that now she could die happy and I guess that later that year she did.
-----------------------
Now, I have some time again so here is the story about the "Frozen Lake Ding Ball"
Up on the North end of the Glacier View District lies Frozen Lake. The US/Canadian border line runs right through the middle of it. In this place there is a creature commonly referred to as the "Frozen Lake Ding Ball".. It is a rather smallish creature about the size of a rather large skunk or thereabouts. For a tail it has a rather long tail and at the end of this tail is a rather large cartilegiouns ball sort of like a volley ball or thereabouts. Now this animal is very particular in what it eats. It's favorite is the Grizzly bear. Now one would wonder how in the world can a creature of this small size feast on a beast the size of the grizzly bear. Well it is simple. The Ding Ball sets on branches overlooking trails with its tail curled up over its back. When a grizzly bear walks down the trail and under the branch, the Ding Ball swings its tail down and whaps the bear on the head and kills it and then has its feast. So-when hiking on trails in the Frozen Lake country BEWARE of the Frozen Lake Ding Ball lest you get whapped longside the haid and wind up for its lunch.
So ends the story of the Frozen Lake Dingball.
Here is another one and I, myself, have used this one on an unsuspecting soul who took it hook, line and sinker. It is about Elk turds. Yep-elk turds.. If one has ever taken notice while in the woods and finds a pile of droppings, look carefully at them. You will find some that are round on both ends and some that are pointed on one end. This is how you can tell the sex of the animals that dropped them. It is a very simple thing to do. The round on both ends ones are from the male of the species and the ones that are pointed on one end are the females of the species. Aw come on! Very simple, the ones that are pointed on one end are dropped from one hole higher. GOTCHA!!!!
A fact that I pulled this off happened on the Bitterroot some years later when I was training a young Junior Forester from California and his dad came to the Bitterroot for a visit. He actually was telling his dad to look for these samples so that they could tell what they were hunting for. When I found this out I almost crapped my britches from laffing.
You knew, of course, that deer and elk like to eat the tree flagging off trees didn't you? Well they like to eat that flagging as then each little turd comes out neatly wrapped in different colors of cellophane. ANOTHER GOTCHA!! HAR, HAR, HAR! Thanks Pat.
Oh yes, I am on a roll now. Squeeker trees! Years ago the Forest Service paid a bounty on squeeker trees. Yep! For everyone a JF (Junior Forester) turned each pay-period, the Ranger would pay him 50 cents. That only worked once per JF and when they found out how stupid it made them look they never did it again! Thanks again Pat!
One more and then I have other things to do. This involves the infamous "Rock Worms" that live up the North Fork. In the spring after runoff and snow-melt, we used to drive the logging roads and check things out such as slides, blowdown and whatnot. The slides and road erosion, Pat told me, was caused by "Rock Worm" damage. Oh really said I being stupid. Oh yes said he. These rock worms burrow in the rocks as evidenced by the little channels made in the rocks. They would eat all winter and then the rocks would be so weakened by their insatiable hunger that it would cause the rocks to disintegrate and thus causing all the slides and damage to the roads. If you don't believe this, just look at some Argelite sometime when you are out and about and you will see some of these little channels that Pat was talking about. Of course this is all a bunch of malarkey but when Pat Taylor told this to a young innocent young forester, they usually believed it-just once.
Enjoy!
TBC
---------------------
Well here we go with story number one.
He always used to tell me that when he had worked for the BPR (Bureau of Public Roads) that he had got the supervisor so mad at him for goofing off and messing things up that he would leave nasty little reminders along the survey routes.
So one day he and I were working on some Salvage Sales and we came upon a survey stake that had "POT" written on the top of it. Now normally you would look at that and think that meant "Point of Tangency" but not ol' Pat. Nope, he said that had been a note that was left by the Engineers and it was addressed to him and it meant "Piss on Taylor". That is story number one.
When he told these stories to folks that one glass eye would really twinkle. Like the times that we would come in from the field at the end of the day and the Timber Staff man (Jim Emerson-aka Slew-foot) would ask us how things went and Pat, with that twinkle, would tell him "Boy we really stuck a Fat Hog today." And poor ol' Jim would act like he would bite a chunk out of his desk.
Story Number three was when my cousin-Johnny Taylor's mother Edith worked in the TM section in the SO and she was always the one that would check over our "Green Slip" sales for errors and whatnot. Years later, before she passed away, she told me that she just knew that Pat and I were cheating on the prices we arrived at on our sales but could never catch us at it. So I told her that was simple. Pat and I knew who we were selling timber to and we would just arrive at a fair price and work backwards from there.
She threw her hands up in the air and exclaimed that was what she had figured but could never prove it and that now she could die happy and I guess that later that year she did.
-----------------------
Now, I have some time again so here is the story about the "Frozen Lake Ding Ball"
Up on the North end of the Glacier View District lies Frozen Lake. The US/Canadian border line runs right through the middle of it. In this place there is a creature commonly referred to as the "Frozen Lake Ding Ball".. It is a rather smallish creature about the size of a rather large skunk or thereabouts. For a tail it has a rather long tail and at the end of this tail is a rather large cartilegiouns ball sort of like a volley ball or thereabouts. Now this animal is very particular in what it eats. It's favorite is the Grizzly bear. Now one would wonder how in the world can a creature of this small size feast on a beast the size of the grizzly bear. Well it is simple. The Ding Ball sets on branches overlooking trails with its tail curled up over its back. When a grizzly bear walks down the trail and under the branch, the Ding Ball swings its tail down and whaps the bear on the head and kills it and then has its feast. So-when hiking on trails in the Frozen Lake country BEWARE of the Frozen Lake Ding Ball lest you get whapped longside the haid and wind up for its lunch.
So ends the story of the Frozen Lake Dingball.
Here is another one and I, myself, have used this one on an unsuspecting soul who took it hook, line and sinker. It is about Elk turds. Yep-elk turds.. If one has ever taken notice while in the woods and finds a pile of droppings, look carefully at them. You will find some that are round on both ends and some that are pointed on one end. This is how you can tell the sex of the animals that dropped them. It is a very simple thing to do. The round on both ends ones are from the male of the species and the ones that are pointed on one end are the females of the species. Aw come on! Very simple, the ones that are pointed on one end are dropped from one hole higher. GOTCHA!!!!
A fact that I pulled this off happened on the Bitterroot some years later when I was training a young Junior Forester from California and his dad came to the Bitterroot for a visit. He actually was telling his dad to look for these samples so that they could tell what they were hunting for. When I found this out I almost crapped my britches from laffing.
You knew, of course, that deer and elk like to eat the tree flagging off trees didn't you? Well they like to eat that flagging as then each little turd comes out neatly wrapped in different colors of cellophane. ANOTHER GOTCHA!! HAR, HAR, HAR! Thanks Pat.
Oh yes, I am on a roll now. Squeeker trees! Years ago the Forest Service paid a bounty on squeeker trees. Yep! For everyone a JF (Junior Forester) turned each pay-period, the Ranger would pay him 50 cents. That only worked once per JF and when they found out how stupid it made them look they never did it again! Thanks again Pat!
One more and then I have other things to do. This involves the infamous "Rock Worms" that live up the North Fork. In the spring after runoff and snow-melt, we used to drive the logging roads and check things out such as slides, blowdown and whatnot. The slides and road erosion, Pat told me, was caused by "Rock Worm" damage. Oh really said I being stupid. Oh yes said he. These rock worms burrow in the rocks as evidenced by the little channels made in the rocks. They would eat all winter and then the rocks would be so weakened by their insatiable hunger that it would cause the rocks to disintegrate and thus causing all the slides and damage to the roads. If you don't believe this, just look at some Argelite sometime when you are out and about and you will see some of these little channels that Pat was talking about. Of course this is all a bunch of malarkey but when Pat Taylor told this to a young innocent young forester, they usually believed it-just once.
Enjoy!
TBC
| HOM: Career Change | for everyone |
This is when my uncle Pat Taylor stepped into the "father" role.
Pat was a career forester and was pushing the thirty-year mark then. His more active days were behind him and he was doing "Deputy Dog" campground maintenance in what was then the Glacier View ranger district in the North Fork.
Like many of my friends, I had applied for a USFS job for the summer, but had not been hired, and Pat knew it..
He called one day, had Mom put me on the phone, and then told me if I wanted a job to meet him at the employment office in Kalispell the next morning.
When I put the pieces together later I found out that Pat was quite a schemer.
He picked me up at the employment office in a USFS pickup, took me up to the ranger station in Columbia falls and ran me through the paperwork, then loaded me into the truck to start his rounds with him.
His job involved visiting every campsite in the district, picking up garbage, restocking firewood, checking toilets and cleaning & resupplying them as needed.
He took great delight in giving me the grand tour and introducing me to people - I still remember meeting Jack Brown, the district engineer!
We met his truck up on a side rode and stopped to visit, and Pat's introduction was along the lines of "Jim, this is Jack Brown, you know, brown like horseshit."
I knew that Pat had quite a sense of quiet humor - working with him introduced me to his other side. More on that later.
My career as "Deputy Deputy Dog" didn't last very long. Hank Hays, the district ranger, called Pat in so he could meet the helper, and when he saw me things sort of erupted. He told Pat I was not what the job called for - it required a younger kid - and he told Pat to find a new helper because he was transferring me to the Timber Stand Improvement (Thinning!) crew immediately.
I felt bad about Pat getting in trouble till we left the office and he let the grin he had been hiding take over. When I watched "The A Team" years later and the famous "I love it when a plan comes together!" line, I always flashed back to uncle Pat and that moment. He never admitted it in so many words, but events went exactly as he hoped they would.
TBC
11
| HOM: WordPlay | for everyone |
Words. Obviously the printed word rules my world, but I really couldn't say if that is an inherited trait or acquired.
I mentioned that Mom loved to read. Some of her other pleasures were Anagrams and Scrabble, Crossword and hidden word puzzles, & Cryptoquotes. These are some of my pleasures too. Scrabble is one of the few games I install on every compatible electronic gadget as soon as I buy it.
I remember playing Anagrams and Scrabble with Mom & Minnie, and I remember the quite-heated discussions we had over what constituted legals words - arguments that resulted in my getting Mom a Scrabble dictionary.
In going through the farm the other day, I found a second Scrabble dictionary. It belonged to Aunt Ellie and was inscribed to her. I guess she had the word bug too.
I don't know if Grandma Streit played scrabble or not, but I remember her doing crosswords. (Both Mom & Grandma also played a LOT of Solitaire!)
I found a nice Crossword dictionary that I had given to Mom, though she rarely needed it or used it. You could ask Mom for a ?-letter word meaning whatever, and after a second or two of thought she could tell you what it was.
I saved the old wooden Anagram set and her beat-up Scrabble set, and hope all the pieces are there. It doesn't matter if they aren't, though - the sentimental value is still enormous.
The last few years before Mom's eyes gave out we gave her giant Crossword puzzle books for all-occasion gifts. (Her last few special occasions, we gave her candy. She did enjoy chocolates, though Dad would loudly reprimand her for eating too many at a time and that kind of took the pleasure out of it for her.)
I suppose my love of words is why I am doing this blog, though it is more of a raw data dump and has no polish whatsoever. Perhaps one day I will go back and redo this in a more readable format. The HOM is being saved in a word processing document as I go, so at least I won't have to dig back through all the posts trying to piece it together again, and sometimes I correct or amend that doc without changing the blog posts.
TBC
I mentioned that Mom loved to read. Some of her other pleasures were Anagrams and Scrabble, Crossword and hidden word puzzles, & Cryptoquotes. These are some of my pleasures too. Scrabble is one of the few games I install on every compatible electronic gadget as soon as I buy it.
I remember playing Anagrams and Scrabble with Mom & Minnie, and I remember the quite-heated discussions we had over what constituted legals words - arguments that resulted in my getting Mom a Scrabble dictionary.
In going through the farm the other day, I found a second Scrabble dictionary. It belonged to Aunt Ellie and was inscribed to her. I guess she had the word bug too.
I don't know if Grandma Streit played scrabble or not, but I remember her doing crosswords. (Both Mom & Grandma also played a LOT of Solitaire!)
I found a nice Crossword dictionary that I had given to Mom, though she rarely needed it or used it. You could ask Mom for a ?-letter word meaning whatever, and after a second or two of thought she could tell you what it was.
I saved the old wooden Anagram set and her beat-up Scrabble set, and hope all the pieces are there. It doesn't matter if they aren't, though - the sentimental value is still enormous.
The last few years before Mom's eyes gave out we gave her giant Crossword puzzle books for all-occasion gifts. (Her last few special occasions, we gave her candy. She did enjoy chocolates, though Dad would loudly reprimand her for eating too many at a time and that kind of took the pleasure out of it for her.)
I suppose my love of words is why I am doing this blog, though it is more of a raw data dump and has no polish whatsoever. Perhaps one day I will go back and redo this in a more readable format. The HOM is being saved in a word processing document as I go, so at least I won't have to dig back through all the posts trying to piece it together again, and sometimes I correct or amend that doc without changing the blog posts.
TBC
| HOM: Farmer Tans | for everyone |
Dad's tan was pretty much limited to the backs of his hands and the lower part of his face and he usually got it when he was on the tractor. He always wore a long-sleeved shirt and when he was working off-tractor he wore gloves, and always wore a hat - usually a tin hard hat with a brim.
He wore the hard hat for shade and to save himself from bumps and knocks around machinery. He always referred to the old story of Bus Danford smacking his head on the tractor so hard that he was kinda nuts for a bit. I guess Bus, when he came to, went up to the house, bathed, dressed in his Sunday best and told his Mom, Jesse, he was going to go to town and get married. Bus, the confirmed bachelor, who avoided women...
Since Dad was already married, I guess he didn't want to take any chances!
Darrel, on the other hand, wore a ball cap and short sleeves much of the time and had a darker and wider-spread tan.
I remember one harvest evening at the end of a long hot summer, Darrel parked the combine at the end of the day, then took off his shirt and shook the dust out of it. His tan made it look like he was wearing a white shirt with short sleeves. And a lot of loose threads and some wrinkles...
I remember, though possibly not accurately, that the summer Jerry spent with us, he put in his first day handling bales on the wagon with his shirt off to get a tan, and Dad commenting about city kids and how they had to learn. I think Jerry's shirtlessness while haying was pretty short lived - hay is both dusty and scratchy and overall itchy.
My attempt at tanning while working was driving the tractor one teen-age afternoon. I was pretty well pleased when I came in - no burn or itch, and a nice uniform tan. I was less pleased when I got in the tub and it all washed off! I guess dust makes a pretty good sunblock.
When school started in the fall and there were programs that the parents were invited to, standing on the stage and looking out over the audience was kind of like looking at a multi-colored carton full of eggs; shiny white domes over the brown faces of the Ridenours and the Streits and the O'Connells and the Danfords in every other seat.
Farmer's tan is mostly history now. It seems like most of the modern farmers use tractors and combines and swathers and such with air conditioned cabs with tinted windows and AM/FM radios.
TBC
He wore the hard hat for shade and to save himself from bumps and knocks around machinery. He always referred to the old story of Bus Danford smacking his head on the tractor so hard that he was kinda nuts for a bit. I guess Bus, when he came to, went up to the house, bathed, dressed in his Sunday best and told his Mom, Jesse, he was going to go to town and get married. Bus, the confirmed bachelor, who avoided women...
Since Dad was already married, I guess he didn't want to take any chances!
Darrel, on the other hand, wore a ball cap and short sleeves much of the time and had a darker and wider-spread tan.
I remember one harvest evening at the end of a long hot summer, Darrel parked the combine at the end of the day, then took off his shirt and shook the dust out of it. His tan made it look like he was wearing a white shirt with short sleeves. And a lot of loose threads and some wrinkles...
I remember, though possibly not accurately, that the summer Jerry spent with us, he put in his first day handling bales on the wagon with his shirt off to get a tan, and Dad commenting about city kids and how they had to learn. I think Jerry's shirtlessness while haying was pretty short lived - hay is both dusty and scratchy and overall itchy.
My attempt at tanning while working was driving the tractor one teen-age afternoon. I was pretty well pleased when I came in - no burn or itch, and a nice uniform tan. I was less pleased when I got in the tub and it all washed off! I guess dust makes a pretty good sunblock.
When school started in the fall and there were programs that the parents were invited to, standing on the stage and looking out over the audience was kind of like looking at a multi-colored carton full of eggs; shiny white domes over the brown faces of the Ridenours and the Streits and the O'Connells and the Danfords in every other seat.
Farmer's tan is mostly history now. It seems like most of the modern farmers use tractors and combines and swathers and such with air conditioned cabs with tinted windows and AM/FM radios.
TBC
| HOM: Food Flights | for everyone |
Guess it's time to wander off onto a new branch of the tree.
A favorite hangout in Nampa was the Chinese restaurant. When we could afford it, we ate there, and my favorite meal was prawns and fried rice.
The prawns were served with hot Chinese mustard and lemon quarters, and when Pat dared me, I coated a slice of lemon with the mustard and ate it.
Not a good idea... The "Fruit of the poor lemon" isn't impossible to eat, but when you add Chinese mustard it comes pretty close. I managed it, however - once.
And that memory triggers a new path down history lane.
I was never wise in my ideas - Mom used to dose me with cod liver oil when I suffered from about anything from hang nails to head colds, and I hated the stuff. One morning I had the bright idea of mixing it with my orange juice. Bad, bad, idea, and to make it worse Mom made me drink it all anyway.
Two of her other standbys were Kaopectate and Milk of Magnesia. The Kao wasn't bad, the MOM was awful, and I found out the hard way that mixing it with milk made it worse and when mixed with orange juice it made me puke. Mom still wasn't sympathetic.
Which reminds me of my dislike of bread crusts, I tore them off and hid them under the edge of my plate. Brilliant idea, till Mom picked up the plate.
Buck became my handy food disposal unit for things I didn't like, since he sat beside my chair at mealtime. I just had to try to slip stuff to him when the folks were talking because he was kinda of a noisy eater.
He ate a lot of liver. I hated - still hate - liver, gizzards and other innards! He was pretty good with bread crusts and cauliflower too.
(Flash forward - I was working for Wards on their delivery truck and brown-bagging my lunches when the driver, Bob, stopped at the old Park Inn to eat their daily special. He derided my lunch and offered to buy "a good meal" for me too. When we went in, he ordered two specials. I asked him what the special was, and he said it didn't matter - you couldn't go wrong for the price. When the waitress flopped down two platters of fried liver he found out you could go wrong - so we went back out to the truck and shared my brown bag lunch. Speaking of the Park Inn - their cinnamon rolls were bigger than dinner plates...)
Good food memories? Grandma's dumplings, Mom's huckleberry pie & fried chicken and German Chocolate cake.
TBC
A favorite hangout in Nampa was the Chinese restaurant. When we could afford it, we ate there, and my favorite meal was prawns and fried rice.
The prawns were served with hot Chinese mustard and lemon quarters, and when Pat dared me, I coated a slice of lemon with the mustard and ate it.
Not a good idea... The "Fruit of the poor lemon" isn't impossible to eat, but when you add Chinese mustard it comes pretty close. I managed it, however - once.
And that memory triggers a new path down history lane.
I was never wise in my ideas - Mom used to dose me with cod liver oil when I suffered from about anything from hang nails to head colds, and I hated the stuff. One morning I had the bright idea of mixing it with my orange juice. Bad, bad, idea, and to make it worse Mom made me drink it all anyway.
Two of her other standbys were Kaopectate and Milk of Magnesia. The Kao wasn't bad, the MOM was awful, and I found out the hard way that mixing it with milk made it worse and when mixed with orange juice it made me puke. Mom still wasn't sympathetic.
Which reminds me of my dislike of bread crusts, I tore them off and hid them under the edge of my plate. Brilliant idea, till Mom picked up the plate.
Buck became my handy food disposal unit for things I didn't like, since he sat beside my chair at mealtime. I just had to try to slip stuff to him when the folks were talking because he was kinda of a noisy eater.
He ate a lot of liver. I hated - still hate - liver, gizzards and other innards! He was pretty good with bread crusts and cauliflower too.
(Flash forward - I was working for Wards on their delivery truck and brown-bagging my lunches when the driver, Bob, stopped at the old Park Inn to eat their daily special. He derided my lunch and offered to buy "a good meal" for me too. When we went in, he ordered two specials. I asked him what the special was, and he said it didn't matter - you couldn't go wrong for the price. When the waitress flopped down two platters of fried liver he found out you could go wrong - so we went back out to the truck and shared my brown bag lunch. Speaking of the Park Inn - their cinnamon rolls were bigger than dinner plates...)
Good food memories? Grandma's dumplings, Mom's huckleberry pie & fried chicken and German Chocolate cake.
TBC
| HOM: Icy Flashback | for everyone |
I was in high school that fall, probably 1963, when the family Thanksgiving get-together resulted in a waterfowl hunt the next day.
There were two boats of us - Paul & I in my boat, Rudy and a friend in his. We put in early the next morning where the old bridge was near Kehoe's Agate Shop, and it was cold enough that the river was covered in slush. We went out to the islands on the delta at the mouth of the river and set up shop in the snow.
We had barely gotten unloaded when two mallards landed. I got one, Rudy's friend got the other.
That was the entire bag for the day.
All of us were cold except Rudy, who was quite proud of his new insulated coveralls, and we tried to keep warm with a little fire while he extolled the virtues of his outfit.
Rudy's pride dropped along with his coveralls and body temperature however, when he had to wade out in the weather when nature called, and ended up squatting in the snow in his underwear with his coveralls in his arms. They didn't have a drop seat and weren't made for bathroom calls in knee-deep snow!
We stuck it out till the afternoon, and then called it quits. It was colder than it had been when we got out there and the geese were not flying at all..
Coming out in the morning, we left a trail in the slush with boats. The slush was now ice and since I was running the lead boat Paul & I set a fast pace in the narrow open leade heading for home and warmth. The drawback to my speeding was that my wake broke up the ice and closed the channel so Rudy had to poke along to keep from damaging his boat on the chunks.
Rudy. He had to deal with a lot of my callowness. I met him out fishing on the slough once, visited with him a minute, then cut in front of him to fish. Rude on my part, and thoughtless, but totally unintentional.
He & I got in a wrestling match once at Minnie Wendt's & I hurt his back. I didn't mean to, I was just goofing around, but Paul said it made Rudy pretty upset with me for a long time.
TBC
There were two boats of us - Paul & I in my boat, Rudy and a friend in his. We put in early the next morning where the old bridge was near Kehoe's Agate Shop, and it was cold enough that the river was covered in slush. We went out to the islands on the delta at the mouth of the river and set up shop in the snow.
We had barely gotten unloaded when two mallards landed. I got one, Rudy's friend got the other.
That was the entire bag for the day.
All of us were cold except Rudy, who was quite proud of his new insulated coveralls, and we tried to keep warm with a little fire while he extolled the virtues of his outfit.
Rudy's pride dropped along with his coveralls and body temperature however, when he had to wade out in the weather when nature called, and ended up squatting in the snow in his underwear with his coveralls in his arms. They didn't have a drop seat and weren't made for bathroom calls in knee-deep snow!
We stuck it out till the afternoon, and then called it quits. It was colder than it had been when we got out there and the geese were not flying at all..
Coming out in the morning, we left a trail in the slush with boats. The slush was now ice and since I was running the lead boat Paul & I set a fast pace in the narrow open leade heading for home and warmth. The drawback to my speeding was that my wake broke up the ice and closed the channel so Rudy had to poke along to keep from damaging his boat on the chunks.
Rudy. He had to deal with a lot of my callowness. I met him out fishing on the slough once, visited with him a minute, then cut in front of him to fish. Rude on my part, and thoughtless, but totally unintentional.
He & I got in a wrestling match once at Minnie Wendt's & I hurt his back. I didn't mean to, I was just goofing around, but Paul said it made Rudy pretty upset with me for a long time.
TBC
| HOM: Professing | for everyone |
Hodgepodge recollections, the good, the bad, and the funny.
Whenever I see a copy of the old red textbook, Hick's Federal Union, I flash back to MSU.
The course required us to get the latest version of the text, but the prof used an older version for class, and compounded things by READING passages from the text in class. No lecture, no discussion, just reading.
If you wanted to simplify the class, you got a copy of the book from a former student that had the passages the prof read highlighted - every question in every test was over the highlighted material and you could skip the boredom of his "lectures"...
Then there was Dr. Tillotson, at NNC. He taught math and made it both interesting and understandable.
His passion for explanation and his dedication made for a few laughs - he was writing a long calculation out on the blackboard, sidestepping along as he wrote and explained, when he put his foot in the wastebasket. Rather than interrupt himself or the student's train of thought, he kept clumping along with it on his foot till he was done writing AND done explaining. When he was sure the student he was doing this for really understood the calculation, he sat down and unwedged his foot and resumed class.
The world needs more teachers like him...
I mentioned Dr. Jones. Years later I was talking to a friend who was a student of his when Jones walked up and joined the conversation. Commandeered it, actually, because he wanted to talk to my friend. I was just sitting there when he swiveled, pointed at me, and asked "What do you think of capital punishment?"
When I said "No repeat offenders", he stared at me a minute, then got up and walked away without another word.
Odd. I remember the extremes in the teachers, those in the middle have faded away. If i was to categorize, I'd say that the math/science teachers and the English teachers were the best, the religion/Social Science/History teachers the dryest
On a side note, I tried to always have a girl buddy who could type. My typing has always sucked, so i would peck out or scribble out my papers and then sweet-talk someone intro typing them up neatly for me. I wish I had taken typing in high school...
TBC
Whenever I see a copy of the old red textbook, Hick's Federal Union, I flash back to MSU.
The course required us to get the latest version of the text, but the prof used an older version for class, and compounded things by READING passages from the text in class. No lecture, no discussion, just reading.
If you wanted to simplify the class, you got a copy of the book from a former student that had the passages the prof read highlighted - every question in every test was over the highlighted material and you could skip the boredom of his "lectures"...
Then there was Dr. Tillotson, at NNC. He taught math and made it both interesting and understandable.
His passion for explanation and his dedication made for a few laughs - he was writing a long calculation out on the blackboard, sidestepping along as he wrote and explained, when he put his foot in the wastebasket. Rather than interrupt himself or the student's train of thought, he kept clumping along with it on his foot till he was done writing AND done explaining. When he was sure the student he was doing this for really understood the calculation, he sat down and unwedged his foot and resumed class.
The world needs more teachers like him...
I mentioned Dr. Jones. Years later I was talking to a friend who was a student of his when Jones walked up and joined the conversation. Commandeered it, actually, because he wanted to talk to my friend. I was just sitting there when he swiveled, pointed at me, and asked "What do you think of capital punishment?"
When I said "No repeat offenders", he stared at me a minute, then got up and walked away without another word.
Odd. I remember the extremes in the teachers, those in the middle have faded away. If i was to categorize, I'd say that the math/science teachers and the English teachers were the best, the religion/Social Science/History teachers the dryest
On a side note, I tried to always have a girl buddy who could type. My typing has always sucked, so i would peck out or scribble out my papers and then sweet-talk someone intro typing them up neatly for me. I wish I had taken typing in high school...
TBC
| HOM: NNC Year Two, Part One | for everyone |
Bill decided I needed to move on, so the second year I moved upstairs and roomed with Ken Ivers, from Fortine. He was fresh out of the army & I was fresh off the farm, so it made for some interesting times. More on this later.
I guess the highlights of that year were mostly humorous. I got to be good friends with Pat McConnell, the Wing Adviser. He was the one charged with keeping order in the wing, and was unofficially referred to as the "Wing Ding". I was probably his worst Problem Child.
I ran around with Vern Brewer, who was my age but with many times the miles & experience I had.
His folks had a farm up in Sand Hollow and he had three cute sisters and a couple of horses, so I went up there with him as often as I could. (I dated his sister Cheryl a little - Cheryl went on to marry Neal Colby and live in Kalispell.)
Vern & I would get in scuffles, he would throw me around the room, and Pat would yell at us to hold the noise down and knock off thumping on the walls on floor. The one time Vern had mercy on me was when his sisters were around - then he let me win one of our matches.
Vern wasn't involved in the fudge episode, though, but Pat was.
I had been given some old and raunchy fudge. It didn't taste good but I hated to throw it away, so I took it down to the community bathroom, molded it into little brown logs, piled them in a rounded heap in the shower, and ran hot water on them till they sort of melted and oozed.
I was back in my room in total innocence when the fiuss started - one of the more emotional kids found the mess, jumped to the conclusion that the pile was somebody's body waste, and yelled for Pat.
Pat walked in, took one look, remembered my mentioning having chocolate, put two and two together and came down and got me. He led me into the bathroom in front of Randy, the reporter of the crime, and said he knew I did it so I better clean it up.
Randy was peeling off paper towels to hand to me when I walked over to the shower, scooped up a handful of the lumpy brown mess, threw it in the trash - and licked my hand.
Randy turned white, Pat turned red, and I started choking - from laughter.
Later, Pat said he wished he had known I was going to do that - he would have substituted the real thing for the chocolate!
Probably my worst trick was totally accidental.In the late spring, someone shot a pheasant and dumped the carcass by the dorm. I saw it, and tossed it up on the porch roof over the side door and forgot about it - till a week or so later when I saw Mike and Don, whose room was right over that porch, hauling all their stuff out in the hall.
I asked them what was up and they said their room smelled so bad they thought they better get their bedding washed and the floor mopped and scrubbed....
Their window was right over that flat porch roof, and by chance the pheasant had landed against the wall under it and wasn't visible from inside. I figured I knew where the smell was coming from, but couldn't see the carcass, so I just commented that the smell seemed to be coming in the window.
Mike agreed, so he opened the screen, looked out, saw the dead bird, stuck his leg out and kicked the juicy mess off the roof - right onto the back of a guy sunbathing, maggots & all!
After the yelling match died down, I joined them in wondering what low-life joker had put the pheasant there!
Once, I had the bright idea of balancing a glass of water on the top of the door next to ours, which was standing partly open. That backfired when the guy in the room reached up and tipped the glass off the door onto me as soon as I set it there. He saw more humor in it than I did...
I think it was this year that I took the philosophy class from Dr Jones. Jones stated that there was no such thing as an absolute truth, and some smart aleck asked him if that was an absolute truth.
This was also the year I took a date to the sweetheart banquet, a candle-lit semi-formal affair, and when someone pass the rolls to me they let the napkin in the bowl dangle in a candle, so all of a sudden I had handful of flames and was trying to blow them out.
I think I'll discuss dating in another post - let's just say that this one wasn't all that atypical. I attract oddness like a magnet attracts iron filings.
TBC
I guess the highlights of that year were mostly humorous. I got to be good friends with Pat McConnell, the Wing Adviser. He was the one charged with keeping order in the wing, and was unofficially referred to as the "Wing Ding". I was probably his worst Problem Child.
I ran around with Vern Brewer, who was my age but with many times the miles & experience I had.
His folks had a farm up in Sand Hollow and he had three cute sisters and a couple of horses, so I went up there with him as often as I could. (I dated his sister Cheryl a little - Cheryl went on to marry Neal Colby and live in Kalispell.)
Vern & I would get in scuffles, he would throw me around the room, and Pat would yell at us to hold the noise down and knock off thumping on the walls on floor. The one time Vern had mercy on me was when his sisters were around - then he let me win one of our matches.
Vern wasn't involved in the fudge episode, though, but Pat was.
I had been given some old and raunchy fudge. It didn't taste good but I hated to throw it away, so I took it down to the community bathroom, molded it into little brown logs, piled them in a rounded heap in the shower, and ran hot water on them till they sort of melted and oozed.
I was back in my room in total innocence when the fiuss started - one of the more emotional kids found the mess, jumped to the conclusion that the pile was somebody's body waste, and yelled for Pat.
Pat walked in, took one look, remembered my mentioning having chocolate, put two and two together and came down and got me. He led me into the bathroom in front of Randy, the reporter of the crime, and said he knew I did it so I better clean it up.
Randy was peeling off paper towels to hand to me when I walked over to the shower, scooped up a handful of the lumpy brown mess, threw it in the trash - and licked my hand.
Randy turned white, Pat turned red, and I started choking - from laughter.
Later, Pat said he wished he had known I was going to do that - he would have substituted the real thing for the chocolate!
Probably my worst trick was totally accidental.In the late spring, someone shot a pheasant and dumped the carcass by the dorm. I saw it, and tossed it up on the porch roof over the side door and forgot about it - till a week or so later when I saw Mike and Don, whose room was right over that porch, hauling all their stuff out in the hall.
I asked them what was up and they said their room smelled so bad they thought they better get their bedding washed and the floor mopped and scrubbed....
Their window was right over that flat porch roof, and by chance the pheasant had landed against the wall under it and wasn't visible from inside. I figured I knew where the smell was coming from, but couldn't see the carcass, so I just commented that the smell seemed to be coming in the window.
Mike agreed, so he opened the screen, looked out, saw the dead bird, stuck his leg out and kicked the juicy mess off the roof - right onto the back of a guy sunbathing, maggots & all!
After the yelling match died down, I joined them in wondering what low-life joker had put the pheasant there!
Once, I had the bright idea of balancing a glass of water on the top of the door next to ours, which was standing partly open. That backfired when the guy in the room reached up and tipped the glass off the door onto me as soon as I set it there. He saw more humor in it than I did...
I think it was this year that I took the philosophy class from Dr Jones. Jones stated that there was no such thing as an absolute truth, and some smart aleck asked him if that was an absolute truth.
This was also the year I took a date to the sweetheart banquet, a candle-lit semi-formal affair, and when someone pass the rolls to me they let the napkin in the bowl dangle in a candle, so all of a sudden I had handful of flames and was trying to blow them out.
I think I'll discuss dating in another post - let's just say that this one wasn't all that atypical. I attract oddness like a magnet attracts iron filings.
TBC
| HOM: Still Remembering | for everyone |
Buck, My little Spaniel buddy. He slept by my bed at night & went with me on my daytime excursions.
He had a few intestinal problems - probably because he would eat anything he could beg or steal or scrounge and thought was food.
Episodes that stick out in memory? I was tossing him bits of food and tossed him a spool of thread - and he swallowed it! The followup was that a few days later he came in with a followup of his own - a length of thread dangling out from under his tail. Mom saw it, grabbed it and jerked, but the thread was tough and didn't break & he yipped. Weird, but the thread unwound in him and took a while to work through his system so he had to be met at the door with scissors every time he had a BM. He eventually puked up the wooden spool - much the worse for wear! (No, I didn't fess up - I lied and said he grabbed the spool when it was accidentally knocked off the table.)
Once Jean O'Connell was visiting with Mom at the kitchen table. Buck was lying under the table and I was playing close by, when Jean casually put her hand up over her nose. A moment later Mom gasped, got a funny look on her face, and told me to put Buck outside, he had gas. After Jean left, Mom asked me if it was me or the dog...
One holiday, Mom set the plate of turkey on the table a bit too close to the edge - the end of a drumstick stuck out. Buck grabbed it and took off for my bedroom with Mom in hot pursuit. She won the race but threw the drumstick away anyway.
The harvest crew was getting ready for lunch at the house and the kitchen was crowded. Mom was a little flustered and my dog was underfoot, so she told me to "put that damn Buck outside". When she turned around and saw Buck Weaver standing behind her with a strange look on his face her fluster factor peaked out. I think that was the only time I ever heard Mom stammer...
TBC
He had a few intestinal problems - probably because he would eat anything he could beg or steal or scrounge and thought was food.
Episodes that stick out in memory? I was tossing him bits of food and tossed him a spool of thread - and he swallowed it! The followup was that a few days later he came in with a followup of his own - a length of thread dangling out from under his tail. Mom saw it, grabbed it and jerked, but the thread was tough and didn't break & he yipped. Weird, but the thread unwound in him and took a while to work through his system so he had to be met at the door with scissors every time he had a BM. He eventually puked up the wooden spool - much the worse for wear! (No, I didn't fess up - I lied and said he grabbed the spool when it was accidentally knocked off the table.)
Once Jean O'Connell was visiting with Mom at the kitchen table. Buck was lying under the table and I was playing close by, when Jean casually put her hand up over her nose. A moment later Mom gasped, got a funny look on her face, and told me to put Buck outside, he had gas. After Jean left, Mom asked me if it was me or the dog...
One holiday, Mom set the plate of turkey on the table a bit too close to the edge - the end of a drumstick stuck out. Buck grabbed it and took off for my bedroom with Mom in hot pursuit. She won the race but threw the drumstick away anyway.
The harvest crew was getting ready for lunch at the house and the kitchen was crowded. Mom was a little flustered and my dog was underfoot, so she told me to "put that damn Buck outside". When she turned around and saw Buck Weaver standing behind her with a strange look on his face her fluster factor peaked out. I think that was the only time I ever heard Mom stammer...
TBC
| HOM: Flashing Back | for everyone |
I remember:
Getting a fancy pair of gold colored cap pistols with pearl grips, black belt & gold-colored metal holsters, and standing in the "front porch" that is now part of the living room, practicing fast draw. I'd read about putting a quarter on the back of your hand at waist level and drawing the pistol before the quarter fell to the floor. I found that it was really easy to do as long as I flipped the quarter ceiling-high when I drew.
Grandma Ridenour staying with us after she sold her house and could not live alone. I remember her making Mom cry. I remember her being moved into a private rest home in town on the west side. I remember having a horrendous crush on Helen Cabbage, the daughter of the people that ran the place, and getting baseball lessons from her brother Frank.. This was about my eighth grade year.
Shortly after I got my first Black Lab, Mike, Mom put a box of groceries on the floor in the kitchen. My faithful old Spaniel, Buck, stuck his nose in the box looking for something to steal and Mike knocked him clear under the kitchen table.
Using a rubber-band shooter to hunt flies on that porch.
Shooting a cousin in the face with a rubber band and losing the shooter permanently.
Mom working in the cellar with the eggs, "candling" them and weighing them while I tunneled in the dirt walls to make caves and roads for my toys soldiers. I remember resenting Dad for making me stop "before I undermined the foundations and the house caved in!"
Asking for an electric train for Christmas and being disappointed at getting skis instead, and then a year or so later getting the train, and Dad getting me a big piece of plywood to mount the tracks on.
Getting a hood from an ancient car as a gift from the McElroys to use as a sled, and it being too heavy for me to pull up the hill.
Dale R. & I playing with Ian's old pump .22 and 16 gauge on the porch, pointing them at each other and clicking away till Dad chewed us out and made us stop because he had this strange idea that doing that with real guns was a stupid thing to do even if they were empty.
Helping Dad fill the bins with hog feed. The bins were about six feet high, four feet wide, and 12 feet long. He would work in the truck feeding ingredients into a grinder and I would be perched up on the bins leveling out the feed as it dropped out of the auger. I remember him noticing that the wind was carrying the exhaust from the diesel straight to an open bedroom window in the house and him going in and making Mom close it. I remember the Riedel's came by to see me and him shutting down the grinder so I could go play, and then his being angry about doing it and saying he did it to keep peace in the family.
Using the apples that fell out of the tree by my bedroom window as BB gun targets.
Shooting a bluebird by mistake when I was after sparrows, and burying it in a tin can in the garden, and then being appalled at the odor when I dug it back up a few days later.
Sitting under the kitchen table and reading comics as Mom cooked, and keeping a stash of comics on a little shelf under the table top.
Uncle Bill, after a holiday meal, curling up on the floor in the living room for a nap. Uncle Bill, sitting backwards in the chair in the kitchen while Mom cut his hair, the same chair where she did mine & Dad's and most of the neighbor men & gave permanents to the farm wives. I remember being thirsty and grabbing a glass with the permanent mix Mom used and how bad it tasted.
Mom had a set of colored aluminum glasses, and over the years they got pretty scratched up inside. I remember cousin Rose drinking Koolaid? - maybe - out of the silver one, and the look on her face when glanced into it and commented on the big wad of dog hair stuck on the bottom. I also remember Mom's frantic "WHAT?" and dash over to the table to grab the glass, and the smack I got from her while she told Rose it was only scratches on the metal and not hair.
Rose refusing to go for walks with me after I ran "accidentally" into her with my bicycle
Wiring old, old, license plates over the good plates on the car as a joke. Putting boards with nails in them under the wheels of the neighbor's cars for the same reason.
Uncle Bill giving me some magazines with photos of topless native ladies in them, and me hiding them under the house, and them disappearing a day or so after mom saw them.
Lying on the back window ledge of Dad's Ford at the drive-in movies until I got too tall to fit there, and pestering Dad for the Juicy Fruit gum he always carried.
Going to the Catholic school. mom went there till she married Dad, then they started going to the Central Christian church while they left me at the catholic school. For some reason, I didn't get along with the nuns and was shortly going along with Mom & Dad. I remember having fun with the pastor's name, O. C. Harris. We would be near him and I would yell "Oh, See!", the pastor would look to see what I was pointing to, and Mom would smack me.
Hiding little things in the trim around the closet in my bed room.
Shooting the 30-30 for the first time. I guess it was Darrel's, as this was before Dad bought one for me, and it was kept in the bedroom where I was forbidden to touch it. Mom went to Riedel's for something, maybe 1/2 a mile away as the crow flies, so I snuck in, grabbed it and a cartridge, went out and set up a beer can (a plentiful target in those days) and shot it. I was admiring the hole in the can when I looked up and saw Mom coming back home at about 3x the speed she left. It was touch and go, but by the time she was out of the car I had the gun away and an innocent look and the explanation that it must have been hunters she heard shoot.
I guess the next time I shot the rifle, she must have gone with someone else because the car was there, and I had the brilliant idea of rolling the window part way down and shooting from inside the car to muffle the sound. Did you say something? Sorry, I am a little deaf...
Putting the garden hose in the furrows in the field close to the house and creating little rivers in them, and carving out toy boats & canoes to float in them. That only lasted a few weeks, till Dad got the electric bill, but it was sure fun. Actually, I still enjoy playing with running water - when the snow starts to melt and the gutter in front of the store is full of ice I enjoy hacking out channels for the melt-off to collect in and flow to the drain at the corner. No toy boats though, I get a little too self-conscious for that.
I remember the summer cousin Jerry spent with us. Mom divided up the dresser in my bedroom, half was his, half mine. When I found out that his half sometimes contained Playboy magazines I expanded my reading (looking?) habits. I was twelve that summer, and it was an educational one.
Someone commenting to Dad that I took good care of my guns, and him replying that I sure did, and that he was surprised. I guess I was a little careless with my possessions. Once in a while he would get after me and make me lube my bike and pump up the tires & I was always surprised at how much easier it was to pedal afterward, but I never did do that on my own. He always had to make me.
Dad working in the field and Mom & I going out to visit him. He decided to have me do the work while he & Mom visited, so he put me on the tractor with detailed directions and away I went. The detailed directions involved using a low gear and going pretty slow, so I shifted up and moved right along till I hit the hill and the tractor bogged down till I had to stop and shift. After I did that for three consecutive rounds Dad ran out of patience and sent me home. Story of my life -seems like I always have time to do things over, but never have the patience to do them right the first time.
------------
Okay, I guess the worst of the pent-up memory storm is over. If this repeats stuff I wrote before, tough. It was a sleepless night.
TBC
Getting a fancy pair of gold colored cap pistols with pearl grips, black belt & gold-colored metal holsters, and standing in the "front porch" that is now part of the living room, practicing fast draw. I'd read about putting a quarter on the back of your hand at waist level and drawing the pistol before the quarter fell to the floor. I found that it was really easy to do as long as I flipped the quarter ceiling-high when I drew.
Grandma Ridenour staying with us after she sold her house and could not live alone. I remember her making Mom cry. I remember her being moved into a private rest home in town on the west side. I remember having a horrendous crush on Helen Cabbage, the daughter of the people that ran the place, and getting baseball lessons from her brother Frank.. This was about my eighth grade year.
Shortly after I got my first Black Lab, Mike, Mom put a box of groceries on the floor in the kitchen. My faithful old Spaniel, Buck, stuck his nose in the box looking for something to steal and Mike knocked him clear under the kitchen table.
Using a rubber-band shooter to hunt flies on that porch.
Shooting a cousin in the face with a rubber band and losing the shooter permanently.
Mom working in the cellar with the eggs, "candling" them and weighing them while I tunneled in the dirt walls to make caves and roads for my toys soldiers. I remember resenting Dad for making me stop "before I undermined the foundations and the house caved in!"
Asking for an electric train for Christmas and being disappointed at getting skis instead, and then a year or so later getting the train, and Dad getting me a big piece of plywood to mount the tracks on.
Getting a hood from an ancient car as a gift from the McElroys to use as a sled, and it being too heavy for me to pull up the hill.
Dale R. & I playing with Ian's old pump .22 and 16 gauge on the porch, pointing them at each other and clicking away till Dad chewed us out and made us stop because he had this strange idea that doing that with real guns was a stupid thing to do even if they were empty.
Helping Dad fill the bins with hog feed. The bins were about six feet high, four feet wide, and 12 feet long. He would work in the truck feeding ingredients into a grinder and I would be perched up on the bins leveling out the feed as it dropped out of the auger. I remember him noticing that the wind was carrying the exhaust from the diesel straight to an open bedroom window in the house and him going in and making Mom close it. I remember the Riedel's came by to see me and him shutting down the grinder so I could go play, and then his being angry about doing it and saying he did it to keep peace in the family.
Using the apples that fell out of the tree by my bedroom window as BB gun targets.
Shooting a bluebird by mistake when I was after sparrows, and burying it in a tin can in the garden, and then being appalled at the odor when I dug it back up a few days later.
Sitting under the kitchen table and reading comics as Mom cooked, and keeping a stash of comics on a little shelf under the table top.
Uncle Bill, after a holiday meal, curling up on the floor in the living room for a nap. Uncle Bill, sitting backwards in the chair in the kitchen while Mom cut his hair, the same chair where she did mine & Dad's and most of the neighbor men & gave permanents to the farm wives. I remember being thirsty and grabbing a glass with the permanent mix Mom used and how bad it tasted.
Mom had a set of colored aluminum glasses, and over the years they got pretty scratched up inside. I remember cousin Rose drinking Koolaid? - maybe - out of the silver one, and the look on her face when glanced into it and commented on the big wad of dog hair stuck on the bottom. I also remember Mom's frantic "WHAT?" and dash over to the table to grab the glass, and the smack I got from her while she told Rose it was only scratches on the metal and not hair.
Rose refusing to go for walks with me after I ran "accidentally" into her with my bicycle
Wiring old, old, license plates over the good plates on the car as a joke. Putting boards with nails in them under the wheels of the neighbor's cars for the same reason.
Uncle Bill giving me some magazines with photos of topless native ladies in them, and me hiding them under the house, and them disappearing a day or so after mom saw them.
Lying on the back window ledge of Dad's Ford at the drive-in movies until I got too tall to fit there, and pestering Dad for the Juicy Fruit gum he always carried.
Going to the Catholic school. mom went there till she married Dad, then they started going to the Central Christian church while they left me at the catholic school. For some reason, I didn't get along with the nuns and was shortly going along with Mom & Dad. I remember having fun with the pastor's name, O. C. Harris. We would be near him and I would yell "Oh, See!", the pastor would look to see what I was pointing to, and Mom would smack me.
Hiding little things in the trim around the closet in my bed room.
Shooting the 30-30 for the first time. I guess it was Darrel's, as this was before Dad bought one for me, and it was kept in the bedroom where I was forbidden to touch it. Mom went to Riedel's for something, maybe 1/2 a mile away as the crow flies, so I snuck in, grabbed it and a cartridge, went out and set up a beer can (a plentiful target in those days) and shot it. I was admiring the hole in the can when I looked up and saw Mom coming back home at about 3x the speed she left. It was touch and go, but by the time she was out of the car I had the gun away and an innocent look and the explanation that it must have been hunters she heard shoot.
I guess the next time I shot the rifle, she must have gone with someone else because the car was there, and I had the brilliant idea of rolling the window part way down and shooting from inside the car to muffle the sound. Did you say something? Sorry, I am a little deaf...
Putting the garden hose in the furrows in the field close to the house and creating little rivers in them, and carving out toy boats & canoes to float in them. That only lasted a few weeks, till Dad got the electric bill, but it was sure fun. Actually, I still enjoy playing with running water - when the snow starts to melt and the gutter in front of the store is full of ice I enjoy hacking out channels for the melt-off to collect in and flow to the drain at the corner. No toy boats though, I get a little too self-conscious for that.
I remember the summer cousin Jerry spent with us. Mom divided up the dresser in my bedroom, half was his, half mine. When I found out that his half sometimes contained Playboy magazines I expanded my reading (looking?) habits. I was twelve that summer, and it was an educational one.
Someone commenting to Dad that I took good care of my guns, and him replying that I sure did, and that he was surprised. I guess I was a little careless with my possessions. Once in a while he would get after me and make me lube my bike and pump up the tires & I was always surprised at how much easier it was to pedal afterward, but I never did do that on my own. He always had to make me.
Dad working in the field and Mom & I going out to visit him. He decided to have me do the work while he & Mom visited, so he put me on the tractor with detailed directions and away I went. The detailed directions involved using a low gear and going pretty slow, so I shifted up and moved right along till I hit the hill and the tractor bogged down till I had to stop and shift. After I did that for three consecutive rounds Dad ran out of patience and sent me home. Story of my life -seems like I always have time to do things over, but never have the patience to do them right the first time.
------------
Okay, I guess the worst of the pent-up memory storm is over. If this repeats stuff I wrote before, tough. It was a sleepless night.
TBC
| HOM: Hiding Out | for everyone |
Expect flashbacks. Disordered flashbacks.
Digging through the mix of objects and memories at the old homestead has unearthed a trove of treasures and skeletons.
Solitude: as I've said, I need it more than most and I think the taste for it developed early for me.
I loved creating hideouts, using a blanket over a card table in the living room or a clothes closet when I was quite young, progressing to sheets over the clotheslines, hollowed out spaces in hay stacks and little campsites hidden in the fencerows & hedges around the farm. They all tended to be fitted out with books & bedding, and the later ones had deluxe things like bottles of water and a portable radio.
The biggest and best were in the hay bales tacked up in the shed. The shed furnished the roof and the bales made up the floor, walls & furnishings. Caveat, though: if you play in a grass house, don't play with matches unless you want to give yourself a heart attack.
There used to be a grown-out thicket of pie cherry bushes in the corner by the driveway that had a neat little clearing that made a cool play spot, and there was a clump of trees along the line fence between us & Riedel's where I hatcheted out a little clearing and rigged a shelter and had a lot of camping fun.
An aside. Dad used to burn the stubble and the brush along the edges of the farm in the spring and being a bit of a pyromaniac I loved helping him.
Once I got a bit too involved, though - the cherry bushes were on the south side of the driveway but the north side had a little patch of buck brush & grass Dad wanted to burn, so I tossed a match into the middle of the patch. The grass burned, the brush didn't, so I decided a little gasoline might help. Dad kept two big 250 gallon tanks, diesel & gas, by the granary, so I grabbed a quart can and the gas tank hose, filled the can, took it over and tossed it on the unburned buckbrush.
I was standing at the edge of the brush fumbling for a match when the gas fumes hit a hot coal. After the whoosh, the brush was burning nicely and I had no eyebrows, rosy cheeks and singed bangs! I decided then, pardon the pun, that playing with fire wasn't such a hot idea.
Anyway, I think the "hideout" phase I was in eventually evolved into this office I am sitting in, so maybe I never did outgrow it.
TBC
Digging through the mix of objects and memories at the old homestead has unearthed a trove of treasures and skeletons.
Solitude: as I've said, I need it more than most and I think the taste for it developed early for me.
I loved creating hideouts, using a blanket over a card table in the living room or a clothes closet when I was quite young, progressing to sheets over the clotheslines, hollowed out spaces in hay stacks and little campsites hidden in the fencerows & hedges around the farm. They all tended to be fitted out with books & bedding, and the later ones had deluxe things like bottles of water and a portable radio.
The biggest and best were in the hay bales tacked up in the shed. The shed furnished the roof and the bales made up the floor, walls & furnishings. Caveat, though: if you play in a grass house, don't play with matches unless you want to give yourself a heart attack.
There used to be a grown-out thicket of pie cherry bushes in the corner by the driveway that had a neat little clearing that made a cool play spot, and there was a clump of trees along the line fence between us & Riedel's where I hatcheted out a little clearing and rigged a shelter and had a lot of camping fun.
An aside. Dad used to burn the stubble and the brush along the edges of the farm in the spring and being a bit of a pyromaniac I loved helping him.
Once I got a bit too involved, though - the cherry bushes were on the south side of the driveway but the north side had a little patch of buck brush & grass Dad wanted to burn, so I tossed a match into the middle of the patch. The grass burned, the brush didn't, so I decided a little gasoline might help. Dad kept two big 250 gallon tanks, diesel & gas, by the granary, so I grabbed a quart can and the gas tank hose, filled the can, took it over and tossed it on the unburned buckbrush.
I was standing at the edge of the brush fumbling for a match when the gas fumes hit a hot coal. After the whoosh, the brush was burning nicely and I had no eyebrows, rosy cheeks and singed bangs! I decided then, pardon the pun, that playing with fire wasn't such a hot idea.
Anyway, I think the "hideout" phase I was in eventually evolved into this office I am sitting in, so maybe I never did outgrow it.
TBC
| The Crash(es) | for everyone |
Originally, I was playing ET and the game locked up. NBD, just needed a hard reset.
Boot to Windows XP desktop, another lockup & hard reset.
The next boot gets to the screen-bottom progress bar - and stops.
Reset. Does a POST. Stops
Reset. Recognizes video card. Stops.
Reset. Dead!
Motherboard problem, obviously. So - replace just the MB (no longer made) and hope the CPU/ram/video cards are good or bite the bullet and get new parts?
Seemed like less gamble to get new parts, so I got a new Asus M2n Deluxe MB, an AMD X2 6000+ cpu, and new OCZ ram.
Install was relatively fast & easy & happily the video cards were still good - but two of the three hard drives I used were toast. I am usually pretty careful about duplicating data but I was a little remiss about using the third drive, which was the one survived. Oh well. If it wasn't for Syncback I would be worse off. Freeware painless data backup!
So - two new hard drives installed, XP installed, data transferred from the old HD, so up, up and away, right?
Nope. this is when the comedy of errors started.
NEVER work on a computer when there is a phone, a kid, a puppy, or any other distraction around! You click the wrong buttons!
Skipping gory details, lets just say that I installed XP nine times AND messed up the XP installed on the laptop before I got it right, and I still have my fingers crossed....
Let me mention the program that helped me fix my goofups and saved me from a few extra XP installs - BARTPE -Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD.
Download the program, build a rescue CD/DVD, boot to the cd and Bingo! - full access to your HD if there are no mechanical problems. It let me go in and run my usual file management and editing programs to fix the boot.ini files I had messed up.
It has been an interesting week or two - and having access to a second computer was invaluable!
I am going to keep using Syncback daily, but now I need to look into a program that will let me mirror my boot drive or at least make an image of it so I can maybe bypass all the install hassles.
Anyway, hopefully - I am back online.
Boot to Windows XP desktop, another lockup & hard reset.
The next boot gets to the screen-bottom progress bar - and stops.
Reset. Does a POST. Stops
Reset. Recognizes video card. Stops.
Reset. Dead!
Motherboard problem, obviously. So - replace just the MB (no longer made) and hope the CPU/ram/video cards are good or bite the bullet and get new parts?
Seemed like less gamble to get new parts, so I got a new Asus M2n Deluxe MB, an AMD X2 6000+ cpu, and new OCZ ram.
Install was relatively fast & easy & happily the video cards were still good - but two of the three hard drives I used were toast. I am usually pretty careful about duplicating data but I was a little remiss about using the third drive, which was the one survived. Oh well. If it wasn't for Syncback I would be worse off. Freeware painless data backup!
So - two new hard drives installed, XP installed, data transferred from the old HD, so up, up and away, right?
Nope. this is when the comedy of errors started.
NEVER work on a computer when there is a phone, a kid, a puppy, or any other distraction around! You click the wrong buttons!
Skipping gory details, lets just say that I installed XP nine times AND messed up the XP installed on the laptop before I got it right, and I still have my fingers crossed....
Let me mention the program that helped me fix my goofups and saved me from a few extra XP installs - BARTPE -Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD.
Download the program, build a rescue CD/DVD, boot to the cd and Bingo! - full access to your HD if there are no mechanical problems. It let me go in and run my usual file management and editing programs to fix the boot.ini files I had messed up.
It has been an interesting week or two - and having access to a second computer was invaluable!
I am going to keep using Syncback daily, but now I need to look into a program that will let me mirror my boot drive or at least make an image of it so I can maybe bypass all the install hassles.
Anyway, hopefully - I am back online.
| Ides & Betides | for everyone |
I'm with J. Caesar - March ain't my favorite month. Not just the Ides, either, March seems to betide bad times.
March 2006, Mom died.
March 2007, Got my thumb decapitated
March 2008, Dad died and my computer fried...
Anyway, the slow slog through the legacy is about over, the contents of the old house are pretty well triaged, a new Motherboard, CPU & Ram are due in here today and the stumble down the homestead branch of memory lane is settling out to where I might be able to get back to the HOM.
March 2006, Mom died.
March 2007, Got my thumb decapitated
March 2008, Dad died and my computer fried...
Anyway, the slow slog through the legacy is about over, the contents of the old house are pretty well triaged, a new Motherboard, CPU & Ram are due in here today and the stumble down the homestead branch of memory lane is settling out to where I might be able to get back to the HOM.
| HOM: NNC #3 | for everyone |
I liked that high-desert country in SW Idaho. Sand, sandstone and sagebrush was a real contrast to this Flathead country and the canyons and buttes were my "call of the wild".
One place I liked was Jump Creek Canyon, out SW of Nampa, a deep, narrow and interesting slot in that sandstone country.
I was told that the pigeons on the rim looked like sparrows from below, that depths & distances were hard to judge, and that the sandstone was treacherous. Trial & error proved all of those things true..
Going in from the mouth of the canyon, you had a choice of climbing the floor or going up the outside and exploring the tops of the walls. We did both, various times.
I have mentioned I don't like heights: that canyon is one reason. Picture high sandstone cliffs dropping onto a steep slope of debris that slanted into a narrow streambed at the bottom and formed a stylized "V" in cross section.
Two of us hiked up the creek bed in the bottom, climbing and exploring the ledges and hollows in the walls above the slopes of debris. We spotted what appeared to be a cave part way up one of the walls and decided to try climbing to it, but disagreed as to the best way up.
My friend started climbing from right below the cave but I moved around a spur of rock to the right and saw a series of small ledges that looked like an easy climb. I dumped my jacket & some extra junk at the base and started up.
I guess I was was maybe 25-30 above the debris slope when I ran out of ledges, so I stopped to survey the situation, standing on one small ledge and holding on to another with both hands. That's when the ledge my feet were on peeled off the cliff.
The big chunk of sandstone landed on my coat and took it bouncing down the slope in a cloud of dust and gravel till it came to rest in the bottom.
There was a looong silence, and then my buddy, who was only a few feet from me but out of sight around the spur, whispered "Is that you down there, Jim?" I guess he was shocked, but I wasn't able to answer - I was hanging on for dear life with both hands, praying the little ledge I was holding wouldn't break off, and trying to get a foot hold, to answer him. When I got toe holds, I told him I was sort of OK, but was going to have trouble getting down. Well, getting down slowly, anyway. DOWN wasn't a problem - SLOW was. Most of the places I'd used as holds to get up there were gone.
I worked my way sideways and finally down, and learned that going down was harder than going up - most of the time you couldn't see where to place your feet and had to feel your way.
When I finally got off the cliff, I found that the insides of both arms were bruised from wrist to shoulder, I guess it was from falling into the face of the cliff when my foothold disappeared.
When I was down, I promised I was done with rock climbing.
The next time we visited the canyon, we went up the outside route, following the rim. That was better - I avoided the edges. I still found a way to be stupid though.
Ever roll a big rock down a steep slope or over a drop-off? It is great fun and in those less-PC days when there were far fewer folks out in the boonies it was a popular sport, so we started rolling stuff into the canyon.
Where I was, the desert/canyon lip wasn't too abrupt. The edge dropped away for a hundred feet or so at about a 30-40 degree angle, and then terminated in a flat shelf and then a sheer drop. Rolling rocks down that slope let them get up a bit of speed before they went airborn of the shelf.
The addictive part of the game is finding bigger and bigger rocks to roll, and eventually I found a BIG rock poised towards the top of a steeper slope and a smaller ledge. It took a lot of work, but I finally got it rolling. I was standing on the slope watching it when it bounced up and came down on the cliff edge - and the slab forming the edge and holding back the whole slope I was on shifted and the whole slope behind it - and me - slid down a few feet.
No. I don't like heights anymore. They scare me.
TBC
One place I liked was Jump Creek Canyon, out SW of Nampa, a deep, narrow and interesting slot in that sandstone country.
I was told that the pigeons on the rim looked like sparrows from below, that depths & distances were hard to judge, and that the sandstone was treacherous. Trial & error proved all of those things true..
Going in from the mouth of the canyon, you had a choice of climbing the floor or going up the outside and exploring the tops of the walls. We did both, various times.
I have mentioned I don't like heights: that canyon is one reason. Picture high sandstone cliffs dropping onto a steep slope of debris that slanted into a narrow streambed at the bottom and formed a stylized "V" in cross section.
Two of us hiked up the creek bed in the bottom, climbing and exploring the ledges and hollows in the walls above the slopes of debris. We spotted what appeared to be a cave part way up one of the walls and decided to try climbing to it, but disagreed as to the best way up.
My friend started climbing from right below the cave but I moved around a spur of rock to the right and saw a series of small ledges that looked like an easy climb. I dumped my jacket & some extra junk at the base and started up.
I guess I was was maybe 25-30 above the debris slope when I ran out of ledges, so I stopped to survey the situation, standing on one small ledge and holding on to another with both hands. That's when the ledge my feet were on peeled off the cliff.
The big chunk of sandstone landed on my coat and took it bouncing down the slope in a cloud of dust and gravel till it came to rest in the bottom.
There was a looong silence, and then my buddy, who was only a few feet from me but out of sight around the spur, whispered "Is that you down there, Jim?" I guess he was shocked, but I wasn't able to answer - I was hanging on for dear life with both hands, praying the little ledge I was holding wouldn't break off, and trying to get a foot hold, to answer him. When I got toe holds, I told him I was sort of OK, but was going to have trouble getting down. Well, getting down slowly, anyway. DOWN wasn't a problem - SLOW was. Most of the places I'd used as holds to get up there were gone.
I worked my way sideways and finally down, and learned that going down was harder than going up - most of the time you couldn't see where to place your feet and had to feel your way.
When I finally got off the cliff, I found that the insides of both arms were bruised from wrist to shoulder, I guess it was from falling into the face of the cliff when my foothold disappeared.
When I was down, I promised I was done with rock climbing.
The next time we visited the canyon, we went up the outside route, following the rim. That was better - I avoided the edges. I still found a way to be stupid though.
Ever roll a big rock down a steep slope or over a drop-off? It is great fun and in those less-PC days when there were far fewer folks out in the boonies it was a popular sport, so we started rolling stuff into the canyon.
Where I was, the desert/canyon lip wasn't too abrupt. The edge dropped away for a hundred feet or so at about a 30-40 degree angle, and then terminated in a flat shelf and then a sheer drop. Rolling rocks down that slope let them get up a bit of speed before they went airborn of the shelf.
The addictive part of the game is finding bigger and bigger rocks to roll, and eventually I found a BIG rock poised towards the top of a steeper slope and a smaller ledge. It took a lot of work, but I finally got it rolling. I was standing on the slope watching it when it bounced up and came down on the cliff edge - and the slab forming the edge and holding back the whole slope I was on shifted and the whole slope behind it - and me - slid down a few feet.
No. I don't like heights anymore. They scare me.
TBC
| HOM: My Apologies | for everyone |
It has been an odd few weeks, and the zig in my ongoing biography has affected my HOM in here. I don't seem to be able to ramble freely down the corridors of my history while the present is distracting me so much.
Trying to come to terms with Dad and my relationship with him now that it he is gone is distracting. I keep stumbling over many little positive/negative things about him that I didn't know and probably won't share.
Part of the distraction has also been our searching for documentation. Dad thought he had left things wrapped up tidily, but he left some very loose ends.
Searching through the old house is stirring up a lot of memories and the disparate dates and facts I have been digging out mean I am going to have to make some corrections in some of the dates & places I have posted here. Mom was a packrat, and stored a wealth of old obituaries/wedding announcements/etc that are correcting some of my misconceptions and faulty memories. When I resume the story it may have a different flavor.
Trying to come to terms with Dad and my relationship with him now that it he is gone is distracting. I keep stumbling over many little positive/negative things about him that I didn't know and probably won't share.
Part of the distraction has also been our searching for documentation. Dad thought he had left things wrapped up tidily, but he left some very loose ends.
Searching through the old house is stirring up a lot of memories and the disparate dates and facts I have been digging out mean I am going to have to make some corrections in some of the dates & places I have posted here. Mom was a packrat, and stored a wealth of old obituaries/wedding announcements/etc that are correcting some of my misconceptions and faulty memories. When I resume the story it may have a different flavor.
| My Urban Survival Tool Kit: Evolution & Update | for everyone |
What I Carry: an old post, updated. Whether at home or at work, I almost always wear a leather pouch on my belt and use its contents daily. Sometimes the contents change. Tool kits evolve, and new technology speeds the process a bit.
KEPT: Smith & Wesson 3500 Frame Lock Stainless Tanto folder: The simplicity, strength & design are perfect for me. One-hand operation for opening and closing, and the tanto point is perfect for working with boxes & labels and strong enough for use as a light-duty pry bar. The 3550S has the serrated edge & is a bit better if you work a lot with ropes & cords.
REPLACED: Mini-Mag flashlight with a Terralux LED conversion unit. Now, a Fenix L2D-CE (Cree Edition LED) Digital LED Flashlight is my choice. Slightly smaller than the Mini-Mag, but 6 Output levels, letting me go from battery-conserving low-light to blinding 135 Lumens. Added features of strobe light and SOS signal flash, pushbutton for better one-hand operation than the Mini.
REPLACED: Gerber Multiplier. Now, I carry a LEATHERMAN Charge Ti. Better One-hand operation, you do not need to open the pliers to use the other tools. One-hand knife blade convenience plus all the Gerber features.
KEPT: Victorinox SwissChamp knife. With two blades, Can opener with small screwdriver, Bottle opener with large screwdriver & wire stripper, Scissors, Pliers with wire cutter, Wood saw, Fish scaler with hook disgorger & ruler, Metal saw with metal file & nail file, Magnifying glass, Reamer with sewing eye, Phillips screwdriver, etc, it is used for precise work.
ADDED: Brunton Echo 7x18 Pocket Scope. 7X magnification; 18 mm objective; 15" close focus so I can use it for distance viewing or up-close magnification; 2.6 mm exit pupil; 12 mm eye relief; F.O.V. @ 1,000 yds. is 181 ft. Measures 1 1/3 x 3 1/3", weighs only 1.8 ozs.
If you noted that I emphasize one-handed operation and wondered why, it is because usually I have hold of something in one hand and can't put it down till I use the appropriate tool on it. I believe this is referred to as either stupidity, bad planning, or lack of foresight.
When I am boonie-bound, I add a sheath knife, lighter & compass to the above load. More on them later.
KEPT: Smith & Wesson 3500 Frame Lock Stainless Tanto folder: The simplicity, strength & design are perfect for me. One-hand operation for opening and closing, and the tanto point is perfect for working with boxes & labels and strong enough for use as a light-duty pry bar. The 3550S has the serrated edge & is a bit better if you work a lot with ropes & cords.
REPLACED: Mini-Mag flashlight with a Terralux LED conversion unit. Now, a Fenix L2D-CE (Cree Edition LED) Digital LED Flashlight is my choice. Slightly smaller than the Mini-Mag, but 6 Output levels, letting me go from battery-conserving low-light to blinding 135 Lumens. Added features of strobe light and SOS signal flash, pushbutton for better one-hand operation than the Mini.
REPLACED: Gerber Multiplier. Now, I carry a LEATHERMAN Charge Ti. Better One-hand operation, you do not need to open the pliers to use the other tools. One-hand knife blade convenience plus all the Gerber features.
KEPT: Victorinox SwissChamp knife. With two blades, Can opener with small screwdriver, Bottle opener with large screwdriver & wire stripper, Scissors, Pliers with wire cutter, Wood saw, Fish scaler with hook disgorger & ruler, Metal saw with metal file & nail file, Magnifying glass, Reamer with sewing eye, Phillips screwdriver, etc, it is used for precise work.
ADDED: Brunton Echo 7x18 Pocket Scope. 7X magnification; 18 mm objective; 15" close focus so I can use it for distance viewing or up-close magnification; 2.6 mm exit pupil; 12 mm eye relief; F.O.V. @ 1,000 yds. is 181 ft. Measures 1 1/3 x 3 1/3", weighs only 1.8 ozs.
If you noted that I emphasize one-handed operation and wondered why, it is because usually I have hold of something in one hand and can't put it down till I use the appropriate tool on it. I believe this is referred to as either stupidity, bad planning, or lack of foresight.
When I am boonie-bound, I add a sheath knife, lighter & compass to the above load. More on them later.
| HOM: NNC - Round Two | for everyone |
If you are looking for chronological order here - forget it! All I can say for sure is that this stuff mostly happened during my first session at NNC, post-HS, pre-USN, with a bit of fill-in added.
When the car came to school, so did camping and hunting gear. This was in the innocent days when guns were an accepted part of society and merely being young and in possession of one did not make you an automatic felon. (Maybe "innocent days" is the wrong term - maybe "the era when common sense was commoner" is more accurate!)
I don't remember the .22 rifle for sure, but I brought my two pistols, the .22 target pistol from MSU and a Ruger .41 magnum Blackhawk revolver.
(I bought the Blackhawk at The Sportsman. I wanted a centerfire revolver and at that time good ones were hard to find. The Blackhawk was the only one for sale in town. It was the short barreled model and the serial number was #435 - a very low SN that would make it worth more today than I paid for it!)
I think the rifle was a Savage/Anschutz 141, a very pretty imported bolt action rifle that I also picked up at the Sportsman. I sold the Nylon .22 to buy it.
(Fill-in. I was always on the quest for the perfect gun - the one I could not miss with. It took me a long time to realize that "I" needed to be perfect, not the gun! My first handgun was a pretty little single-action Ruger Bearcat I got when I was in high school. It was replaced by a Ruger Standard Auto .22 & the Bearcat was sold to classmate Jack Mckay. Later, I sold the Standard to classmate Harold Clarke so I could get the High Standard target pistol.)
(When I got the Standard, I was out fishing and playing on the slough, ran into Uncle Rudy and showed it to him. he said it was "Skookum" - my first encounter with that word.)
In that high desert country around Nampa, jackrabbits & rattlesnakes were common, so we used to go out hunting for them a lot. One trip is etched into memory!
Three of us were out near Kuna plinking and hunting, myself, Walt M., and Don J., another friend. Walt was using my .41 & I used my .22 target pistol for a while, then we traded. It was a fortunate move!
Walt was climbing around looking for a clear shot at something when he stumbled. The .22 went off into his leg. If it had been the 41, it might have been a fatal wound . . .
We got him into the car and headed for the hospital on the NNC campus. I pushed that poor little Ford harder than I have any car, ever, and it seemed like we were crawling even though we slid on the corners - and the brakes gave out as we reached the hospital! They lasted just long enough - we bounced over the curb and stopped on the sidewalk. (That hospital is now the NNU Fine Arts Building.)
Walt was laid up for a long time. The bullet went into the top of his thigh, hit the bone, traveled down, and lodged just above his knee. The impact split the bone lengthwise.
Had it been the .41, with handloaded 210 grain hollow-points, he would probably have lost his leg & maybe his life. Was it the gun's fault? No, guns, like cars, require care for safe use. It was Walt's goofup and he only blamed himself.
Later on, when I told Donal about this episode, he only commented that for getting such a late start at experience I was piling it on pretty quickly. True statement, I guess.
TBC
When the car came to school, so did camping and hunting gear. This was in the innocent days when guns were an accepted part of society and merely being young and in possession of one did not make you an automatic felon. (Maybe "innocent days" is the wrong term - maybe "the era when common sense was commoner" is more accurate!)
I don't remember the .22 rifle for sure, but I brought my two pistols, the .22 target pistol from MSU and a Ruger .41 magnum Blackhawk revolver.
(I bought the Blackhawk at The Sportsman. I wanted a centerfire revolver and at that time good ones were hard to find. The Blackhawk was the only one for sale in town. It was the short barreled model and the serial number was #435 - a very low SN that would make it worth more today than I paid for it!)
I think the rifle was a Savage/Anschutz 141, a very pretty imported bolt action rifle that I also picked up at the Sportsman. I sold the Nylon .22 to buy it.
(Fill-in. I was always on the quest for the perfect gun - the one I could not miss with. It took me a long time to realize that "I" needed to be perfect, not the gun! My first handgun was a pretty little single-action Ruger Bearcat I got when I was in high school. It was replaced by a Ruger Standard Auto .22 & the Bearcat was sold to classmate Jack Mckay. Later, I sold the Standard to classmate Harold Clarke so I could get the High Standard target pistol.)
(When I got the Standard, I was out fishing and playing on the slough, ran into Uncle Rudy and showed it to him. he said it was "Skookum" - my first encounter with that word.)
In that high desert country around Nampa, jackrabbits & rattlesnakes were common, so we used to go out hunting for them a lot. One trip is etched into memory!
Three of us were out near Kuna plinking and hunting, myself, Walt M., and Don J., another friend. Walt was using my .41 & I used my .22 target pistol for a while, then we traded. It was a fortunate move!
Walt was climbing around looking for a clear shot at something when he stumbled. The .22 went off into his leg. If it had been the 41, it might have been a fatal wound . . .
We got him into the car and headed for the hospital on the NNC campus. I pushed that poor little Ford harder than I have any car, ever, and it seemed like we were crawling even though we slid on the corners - and the brakes gave out as we reached the hospital! They lasted just long enough - we bounced over the curb and stopped on the sidewalk. (That hospital is now the NNU Fine Arts Building.)
Walt was laid up for a long time. The bullet went into the top of his thigh, hit the bone, traveled down, and lodged just above his knee. The impact split the bone lengthwise.
Had it been the .41, with handloaded 210 grain hollow-points, he would probably have lost his leg & maybe his life. Was it the gun's fault? No, guns, like cars, require care for safe use. It was Walt's goofup and he only blamed himself.
Later on, when I told Donal about this episode, he only commented that for getting such a late start at experience I was piling it on pretty quickly. True statement, I guess.
TBC
| Suicide? | for everyone |
Almost - I had this sudden impulse...
My daughter & grandson were leaving. The loss of her grandfather and the declining size of her family depress her and worry her. She worries about me.
So, being me, I said goodby to them out front by their truck, and they were watching me walk back to the store when I had this sudden impulse to grab my chest, stagger, fall against the building, slide down to the sidewalk, convulse a bit, act out the whole heart attack routine....
Then I had this sudden vision of my daughter spending her life in prison for murder - cause she would have KILLED me when she came running up and I started laughing.
Like I said, a sudden impulse, easily overcome.
My daughter & grandson were leaving. The loss of her grandfather and the declining size of her family depress her and worry her. She worries about me.
So, being me, I said goodby to them out front by their truck, and they were watching me walk back to the store when I had this sudden impulse to grab my chest, stagger, fall against the building, slide down to the sidewalk, convulse a bit, act out the whole heart attack routine....
Then I had this sudden vision of my daughter spending her life in prison for murder - cause she would have KILLED me when she came running up and I started laughing.
Like I said, a sudden impulse, easily overcome.
| \ |
| HOM: NNC - BC & AC | for everyone |
I guess it is time to start this again. The cycle of life goes on . . .
I wish that, like a friend of mine, I had kept diaries. It would be a lot easier and more accurate - actually, it would be done! All I would need to do is pass them on to someone else to transcribe. Oh well, this way I can leave out what I want and distort whatever I please.
Reading back over this, I only hope I gave an undistorted account of Dad. I tried to be impartial, though I probably didn't have the distance to be, but those that knew him best said my accounts seemed accurate.
Anyway. the story goes on.
NNC - Before Car & After Car
I don't remember when I brought my car to Nampa. It may have been as early as Christmas of 1965 or it may have been as late as the fall of '66. I tend to think it was '66 as most of my car related memories were of friends from that second NNC year.
All I know is that having a car there expanded my horizons a lot, allowing me to explore & hunt in the desert and gain more experience at many things and did not help my grades.
TBC
I wish that, like a friend of mine, I had kept diaries. It would be a lot easier and more accurate - actually, it would be done! All I would need to do is pass them on to someone else to transcribe. Oh well, this way I can leave out what I want and distort whatever I please.
Reading back over this, I only hope I gave an undistorted account of Dad. I tried to be impartial, though I probably didn't have the distance to be, but those that knew him best said my accounts seemed accurate.
Anyway. the story goes on.
NNC - Before Car & After Car
I don't remember when I brought my car to Nampa. It may have been as early as Christmas of 1965 or it may have been as late as the fall of '66. I tend to think it was '66 as most of my car related memories were of friends from that second NNC year.
All I know is that having a car there expanded my horizons a lot, allowing me to explore & hunt in the desert and gain more experience at many things and did not help my grades.
TBC
| Dad Died Yesterday. | for everyone |
He apparently died of a heart attack while he was out getting wood from the shed. It is possible that he slipped and fell and the effort of trying to get back up was too much for him. He was 90 years old.
It was one day short of the second anniversary of Mom's death: I do not think that was a coincidence. Dad has been consumed by loneliness since she died. I pray that he is at peace now.
I am at a loss for words. I feel both loss & relief. I am glad his loneliness and frustration are over.
I loved him. I respected him as the most honest and hard-working man I ever knew. He always did what he thought was right, and always did his best.He lived life on his terms.
I know he loved me, I know he was proud of me, though he never told me so.
I wish I was half the man he was in many ways.
I wish with all my heart that our personalities and circumstances had allowed us to be closer friends.
My world is a lesser place today.
It was one day short of the second anniversary of Mom's death: I do not think that was a coincidence. Dad has been consumed by loneliness since she died. I pray that he is at peace now.
I am at a loss for words. I feel both loss & relief. I am glad his loneliness and frustration are over.
I loved him. I respected him as the most honest and hard-working man I ever knew. He always did what he thought was right, and always did his best.He lived life on his terms.
I know he loved me, I know he was proud of me, though he never told me so.
I wish I was half the man he was in many ways.
I wish with all my heart that our personalities and circumstances had allowed us to be closer friends.
My world is a lesser place today.
| HOM: NNC - Round One, learning | for everyone |
This first year was a learning year, and most of the lessons were outside the classrooms.
I learned a little about SCUBA diving from Bill, who was a certified diver. Out at Lake Lowell, he rigged me up with tank, fins and instructions and let me explore underwater a bit.
I learned to play pingpong in the dorm.
I learned that if I put my fingers around the edge of the paddle itself I could get a fine blood blister from hitting the table when I tried to chop the ball. I learned that shoes with slick soles would let you fall flat on your face in a hotly-contested game. I learned that a fast low serve worked better if you didn't ram your knuckles into the edge of the table. I learned several new words that were PG rated versions of words I already knew!
I learned that watching OTHER folks make those mistakes was funnier than when I made them!
I learned that taking a corner too fast when you were riding a bicycle on concrete was a sure fire disaster, and that if you landed hard enough you could actually break the handlebars.
I learned that telling a classmate she looked younger than the grade school kids she was working with wasn't a compliment and would cause her to not speak to me again.
I learned that Head Residents of dorms were pretty close to psychic, or else had a good espionage system....
The Psychic HR thing came home to me when a buddy & I got fed up with a fellow in the dorm. We pushed the fellow's VW bug out into the middle of Kurtz Park, jacked it up, took the wheels off, put them flat under the car and lowered it back down on them. Then we covered the thing in whipped cream and toilet paper so it looked like a big ice cream sundae out in the trees. Finally we emulated good little guerrillas and vanished back into the general populace.
I was in the dorm lobby when the victim discovered his car and came running in to complain to the HR, I listened with interest to his description (exaggerated) of the damage to his VW and Al Haynes' outpouring of sympathy and promises of justice to him. However, when the VW man left, Al turned, poked his finger in my chest and said he hoped the guy never found out that I was really the one responsible! (Later I realized that VW man had caused Al problems in the dorm and Al thought a dose of his own medicine might do him good.)
Bill was an instigator in the VW plot, but he was shocked by one of my later escapades.
I don't remember what prank I pulled to trigger this episode, but Ron & Ernie decided it would be
great fun to partially fill a big garbage can with water, lean it against our door, then pound on the door and stand back. I opened the door and got soaked from thighs down before I could dodge, and Ron & Ernie took off for their room and locked the door before I could get there.
The weather was warm, though, and they had open windows, so I rounded up a bucket of cold water outside, lined up on where it sounded like they were sitting - laughing - and let fly with it through the window. That stopped the laughing...
Why was Bill shocked? Well, remember the rugs? They were wet, he was barefoot, and it seems that his desk lamp had a short circuit he didn't know about. When he got done vibrating, I got in trouble for being the one who had started the whole thing.
Then there was the night of the cat. Finals week and a big, horny, and very vocal tom cat doing sentry duty outside the dorm was a bad combination. The cat was captured but no one knew what to do with it. The captors decided it would be funny to tie it to Al Haynes' door knob but someone piped up and said it would be funnier to get another cat, tie their tails together, and hang them over a rope stretched from Al's doorknob to the door across the hall, so he couldn't open it.
Getting a second cat seemed simple, Ron and several guys went out with a fish net looking for one that evening. No luck. They saw one run across the street into a yard behind a house, one of the guys took off after it with the net - and came flying back out from the yard with a dog snapping at his heels.
The situation got complicated when someone recognized the cat and threatened to tell the owner if it wasn't turned loose. A promise was made that the cat would be released unharmed, and it was. At least it was unharmed when it was released - out of the window of a car doing in excess of 100mph....
The next day, the cat was home again, apparently none the worse for wear, but it never again came near the dorm. I learned that cats really did have nine lives.
I learned not to answer the dorm phone by saying "Mangum, what in the hall do you want?" That was the same time I learned that school administrators sometimes called the dorms.
I learned that if someone pointed behind you at the dining room table and said "Look", when you turned back to the table you'd find little things like salt in your coke or ketchup on your ice cream or missing silverware.
I learned to say grace with one hand covering my drink and the other hovering over my plate. See above paragraph for the reason.
When I got my car down there later on, I learned that a rattling noise in the front end might be caused by rocks in the hub caps.
I learned that if you jacked up the rear of the Head Resident's car and put blocks under the axle so the tires were not quite touching the ground he would assume that his transmission was broken. (I also learned that, luckily, his ESP didn't always work!)
I learned, through boxing with Dick & Ernie. not to lead with my right and what it felt like to land in a closet if I did.
TBC
10
| HOM: NNC & Addiction | for everyone |
My love affair with coffee got started at NNC.
Prior to that, coffee was something you added to a cup of cream and sugar to cut the sweetness.
(Flashback: Vic. He called it "Norwegian Style" when he would pour a fresh cup of steaming hot coffee, measure out a teaspoonful of sugar, EAT THE SUGAR, and then drink the coffee.)
Anyway, "The Bean" was the coffee shop in the student center where folks gathered, studied, drank coffee, ate donuts, and visited. During finals week, they peddled a LOT of coffee there. Long late hours and caffeine stimulation went well together.
At the end of the year, I had learned to like coffee, though "black" was still foreign to my drinking vocabulary. Coca-cola was still my beverage of choice most of the time.
TBC
Prior to that, coffee was something you added to a cup of cream and sugar to cut the sweetness.
(Flashback: Vic. He called it "Norwegian Style" when he would pour a fresh cup of steaming hot coffee, measure out a teaspoonful of sugar, EAT THE SUGAR, and then drink the coffee.)
Anyway, "The Bean" was the coffee shop in the student center where folks gathered, studied, drank coffee, ate donuts, and visited. During finals week, they peddled a LOT of coffee there. Long late hours and caffeine stimulation went well together.
At the end of the year, I had learned to like coffee, though "black" was still foreign to my drinking vocabulary. Coca-cola was still my beverage of choice most of the time.
TBC
| HOM: NNC In The Haze | for everyone |
These first two years are hard to salvage.
I spent the 65-66 and 66-67 terms at Nampa, took a paid (Courtesy of the USN) four year hiatus and then returned for two more partial years - winter/spring of 72 & winter/spring of 73.
Two sets of memories, two sets of friends, too many events. It is going to take a while to get any sort of order in this - be patient. Keeping who/when sorted out at this distance is hard.
OK - back to 65-66, J.W. Shires, and the new environment.
One of the mixed signals NNC gave me was a required PE class. I had taken three PE classes at MSU - swimming, softball & bowling - and thought I had the PE stuff all over with. Wrong! Freshman had to take PE & technically I was a freshman so I found myself slogging around a track and doing calisthenics again. (In those days NNC didn't have fun PE classes like MSU did.) Remember I said I didn't enjoy walking? Well, I HATE running!
Bill pushed me into studying harder too, and I remember surprising one of his more elitist friends by getting the highest score in class on a Psych test. My studying went downhill a bit when I started dating, though.
----------
Well, if there is going to be any order in this, I better start with the dorm.
Mangum Hall was an el-shaped two-story building on the east side of what was then Kurtz park on the SE corner of the intersection and just a block up from what was then a hospital. Helstrom Business Center is on that spot now and the four square blocks that were the park are now occupied by Brandt Center and parking lots. The park was beautiful, trees and grass, and a favorite student hangout.
The bottom of the north wing held Al Haynes' residence and two large dorm rooms. Bill had one of the big rooms and certainly the nicest. Dick Stevens, Ernie larson & Ron Musick had the other room.
----------
Bill's room was a home - rugs on the floor, stereo, a nice selection of records - and reflected his taste. The room also reflected his shopping habits, and I just now realize where I got some of my habits. Bill bought nice things, secondhand and at bargain prices. He traded, bartered, haggled, made and saved money, and enjoyed the nicer things in life on a budget.
(One comment a guy made about Bill in those pre-PC days - "He's worse than a Jew, he's a Jap!")
This kind of shopping was new to me. as Dad's theory on buying used merchandise was that you were only buying someone else's problems.
Sometimes Bill's schemes backfired. He wanted a red vest to go with his suit and I decided I wanted one too, so off we went to the thrift shops - fruitlessly! Every vest they had was black.
Bill's bright idea involved red dye, so we got a couple of the black vests and some red dye and went to work.
Let me advise you, up front, you CAN"T dye black clothing red, no matter how hard you try - and we tried! We also found out that if you put wet freshly-dyed clothes in a drier, the drier ended up retaining the dye and depositing it in the next batch of clothes that were put in.
Al Haynes didn't like having all-pink undies! He was the next one to use the driers and as soon as he took them out of the machine he ran down and banged on our door - he KNEW we were responsible but couldn't prove it!
Fortunately, most of Bill's plans worked better.
----------
Since I need to salvage SOME order out of this, I need to wander back in memory a bit and figure more things out. Like Ahnold, I'll be back - hopefully with a little order mixed in with the humor and anecdotes.
TBC
I spent the 65-66 and 66-67 terms at Nampa, took a paid (Courtesy of the USN) four year hiatus and then returned for two more partial years - winter/spring of 72 & winter/spring of 73.
Two sets of memories, two sets of friends, too many events. It is going to take a while to get any sort of order in this - be patient. Keeping who/when sorted out at this distance is hard.
OK - back to 65-66, J.W. Shires, and the new environment.
One of the mixed signals NNC gave me was a required PE class. I had taken three PE classes at MSU - swimming, softball & bowling - and thought I had the PE stuff all over with. Wrong! Freshman had to take PE & technically I was a freshman so I found myself slogging around a track and doing calisthenics again. (In those days NNC didn't have fun PE classes like MSU did.) Remember I said I didn't enjoy walking? Well, I HATE running!
Bill pushed me into studying harder too, and I remember surprising one of his more elitist friends by getting the highest score in class on a Psych test. My studying went downhill a bit when I started dating, though.
----------
Well, if there is going to be any order in this, I better start with the dorm.
Mangum Hall was an el-shaped two-story building on the east side of what was then Kurtz park on the SE corner of the intersection and just a block up from what was then a hospital. Helstrom Business Center is on that spot now and the four square blocks that were the park are now occupied by Brandt Center and parking lots. The park was beautiful, trees and grass, and a favorite student hangout.
The bottom of the north wing held Al Haynes' residence and two large dorm rooms. Bill had one of the big rooms and certainly the nicest. Dick Stevens, Ernie larson & Ron Musick had the other room.
----------
Bill's room was a home - rugs on the floor, stereo, a nice selection of records - and reflected his taste. The room also reflected his shopping habits, and I just now realize where I got some of my habits. Bill bought nice things, secondhand and at bargain prices. He traded, bartered, haggled, made and saved money, and enjoyed the nicer things in life on a budget.
(One comment a guy made about Bill in those pre-PC days - "He's worse than a Jew, he's a Jap!")
This kind of shopping was new to me. as Dad's theory on buying used merchandise was that you were only buying someone else's problems.
Sometimes Bill's schemes backfired. He wanted a red vest to go with his suit and I decided I wanted one too, so off we went to the thrift shops - fruitlessly! Every vest they had was black.
Bill's bright idea involved red dye, so we got a couple of the black vests and some red dye and went to work.
Let me advise you, up front, you CAN"T dye black clothing red, no matter how hard you try - and we tried! We also found out that if you put wet freshly-dyed clothes in a drier, the drier ended up retaining the dye and depositing it in the next batch of clothes that were put in.
Al Haynes didn't like having all-pink undies! He was the next one to use the driers and as soon as he took them out of the machine he ran down and banged on our door - he KNEW we were responsible but couldn't prove it!
Fortunately, most of Bill's plans worked better.
----------
Since I need to salvage SOME order out of this, I need to wander back in memory a bit and figure more things out. Like Ahnold, I'll be back - hopefully with a little order mixed in with the humor and anecdotes.
TBC
| HOM: Deja Vu All Over Again! | for everyone |
(Thank you, Yogi Berra! I love the way you mangled the language!)
(For more Yogi, see http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/y/yogiberra135233.html )
The folks drove off & I drug my stuff up to the dorm - the freshman dorm - the WRONG dorm!
NNC & MSU used different systems, I think it was trimesters vs quarters, and NNC wasn't sure what to do with me after my two quarters at MSU. Their first decision was that I shouldn't be in the freshman dorm but in one of the sophomore dorms across campus.
NNC: There I was, misplaced, lost, lonely, depressed, out of step again and kicking myself for deciding to make such a drastic change. 500 Miles From Home.
That beginning gave me no inkling of the miracles that would happen that year.
I gathered up as much of my stuff as I could carry and was surveying the rest when an affable young man named Neil Colby walked up, introduced himself, found out the situation, grabbed a couple of bags and said "Follow me!" Neil was my first friend at NNC.
(Neil. I better fill this in while the brainthane is still strong. Neil was a PK, a Preacher's Kid. In later years I dated the woman he ended up marrying, worked with his younger brother at C&C Plywood, and listened to his father, Bernie, preach at my church when he pastored there. His time at NNC ended when the school disapproved of the dynamite he stored under his bed, but years later he moved to Kalispell and we got reacquainted. As far as I know, Neil & Cheryl live in Alaska now. )
He led me over to Mangum Hall, my new home, and introduced me to the man in charge of the dorm, an Alaskan guide named Al Haynes who had come back to school to get a theology degree. Al assigned me an empty room. (Fall term had kids packed like sardines into the rooms, every quarter thereafter there was more room as kids dropped out.) I got my stuff more or less unpacked and then wandered around trying to get oriented.
Since I was a sophofreshman (Freshomore? Sophman?) in the school's eye, neither fish nor fowl, I didn't go through the usual freshman orientation. Instead of being in the freshman dorm where everyone was new and working at getting acquainted and making friends I was in with kids who had mostly known each other for the last year and had established their cliques and friendships already. I was Out Of Step again.
I don't remember the circumstances now, but I met the guy that had a profound effect on my life. His name was Bill Shires; my age, but far more nature than most of the kids on campus. He was a social worker at heart and picked me for his project that year.
He invited me to be his room mate and then gave me a crash course on living and socializing. He introduced me to his girlfriend and into his circle of friends and did his best to teach me all the social graces I needed to get by on campus, the stuff most folks pick up as little kids. He worked on my dressing, grooming, studying, socializing, interacting, working, meeting girls, dating, et al, till at least some of my rough edges were gone.
I think that I owe who I am to Bill, almost as much as I owe Mom & Gordon & Lois.
For more on Bill, and the kind of man he is, go to: http://blacktailbooks.com/shires.html
TBC
(For more Yogi, see http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/y/yogiberra135233.html )
The folks drove off & I drug my stuff up to the dorm - the freshman dorm - the WRONG dorm!
NNC & MSU used different systems, I think it was trimesters vs quarters, and NNC wasn't sure what to do with me after my two quarters at MSU. Their first decision was that I shouldn't be in the freshman dorm but in one of the sophomore dorms across campus.
NNC: There I was, misplaced, lost, lonely, depressed, out of step again and kicking myself for deciding to make such a drastic change. 500 Miles From Home.
That beginning gave me no inkling of the miracles that would happen that year.
I gathered up as much of my stuff as I could carry and was surveying the rest when an affable young man named Neil Colby walked up, introduced himself, found out the situation, grabbed a couple of bags and said "Follow me!" Neil was my first friend at NNC.
(Neil. I better fill this in while the brainthane is still strong. Neil was a PK, a Preacher's Kid. In later years I dated the woman he ended up marrying, worked with his younger brother at C&C Plywood, and listened to his father, Bernie, preach at my church when he pastored there. His time at NNC ended when the school disapproved of the dynamite he stored under his bed, but years later he moved to Kalispell and we got reacquainted. As far as I know, Neil & Cheryl live in Alaska now. )
He led me over to Mangum Hall, my new home, and introduced me to the man in charge of the dorm, an Alaskan guide named Al Haynes who had come back to school to get a theology degree. Al assigned me an empty room. (Fall term had kids packed like sardines into the rooms, every quarter thereafter there was more room as kids dropped out.) I got my stuff more or less unpacked and then wandered around trying to get oriented.
Since I was a sophofreshman (Freshomore? Sophman?) in the school's eye, neither fish nor fowl, I didn't go through the usual freshman orientation. Instead of being in the freshman dorm where everyone was new and working at getting acquainted and making friends I was in with kids who had mostly known each other for the last year and had established their cliques and friendships already. I was Out Of Step again.
I don't remember the circumstances now, but I met the guy that had a profound effect on my life. His name was Bill Shires; my age, but far more nature than most of the kids on campus. He was a social worker at heart and picked me for his project that year.
He invited me to be his room mate and then gave me a crash course on living and socializing. He introduced me to his girlfriend and into his circle of friends and did his best to teach me all the social graces I needed to get by on campus, the stuff most folks pick up as little kids. He worked on my dressing, grooming, studying, socializing, interacting, working, meeting girls, dating, et al, till at least some of my rough edges were gone.
I think that I owe who I am to Bill, almost as much as I owe Mom & Gordon & Lois.
For more on Bill, and the kind of man he is, go to: http://blacktailbooks.com/shires.html
TBC
| HOM: OH MY!! | for everyone |
This fresh memory bubble just popped up! The only pun I ever heard from Vic!
When I got my first car, I took it over to show Vic. The conversation went like this:
Vic: "What did you get?"
Me: " A Ford Falcon!"
Vic: "Yes, you always get a Falcon when you buy a Ford!"
Vic liked Dodges, not Fords....
Told ya some of the bubbles smelled funny!
TBC
When I got my first car, I took it over to show Vic. The conversation went like this:
Vic: "What did you get?"
Me: " A Ford Falcon!"
Vic: "Yes, you always get a Falcon when you buy a Ford!"
Vic liked Dodges, not Fords....
Told ya some of the bubbles smelled funny!
TBC
| HOM: Marshing On! | for everyone |
Time to stir up the mud in a new arm of the bog: NNC.
Lois & Gordon thought I should go to Northwest Nazarene College. It had a morally cleaner environment than MSU and had the advantage of being 500 miles away in a different state.
At MSU, I made it home every few weekends and called home a lot. Lois thought more separation would be good for me, so I applied to NNC and was accepted for the 1965 fall term.
I didn't discuss this too much with the folks, though Mom knew of my plans, and I was pleasantly surprised when Dad broached the idea that it might be better for me to go to a different school that was further away. I don't know if Mom had coached him, but when I told him of my NNC plans he didn't seem too surprised. I suspect Dad felt I was too much of a Momma's boy and needed to cut the apron strings. I also suspect he was right!
Mom had always been quite protective of me and kept me on a pretty short leash when she could and my rocky relationship with Dad hadn't helped. I still remember a fight he had with Mom over wanting me to work at Darel's more than I did, and his slamming out of the house yelling that she better teach me how to cook & sew if she wasn't going to let me learn to work with him.
I was pretty mad at him for that, but looking back I see his point, but he never made any noticeable effort to make working with him a pleasant learning experience.
I gotta admit, though, working with him was great preparation for Boot Camp later on. By that time I was used to keeping my mouth shut while being yelled at!
Anyway, that September he & Mom loaded me and my stuff into my car and we headed over Lolo pass for Nampa and a new learning curve. The next two years taught me a lot!
The lessons started with that trip. I drove my little Falcon down there and got 16mpg, Dad drove it back to Montana and got 26mpg. The difference was in the driver! (I still don't get good gas mileage from my rigs - I love horsepower and speed way too much. Dad babied all his mechanical possessions, was meticulous with their maintenance and gentle in their use. His old farm truck is over 50 years old and still in use!)
Anyway - NNC!
We found the campus and located the freshman dorm, then Dad dumped me and my stuff on the sidewalk and left. Time to sink or swim, and maybe time to sort out the boys from the men.
TBC
Lois & Gordon thought I should go to Northwest Nazarene College. It had a morally cleaner environment than MSU and had the advantage of being 500 miles away in a different state.
At MSU, I made it home every few weekends and called home a lot. Lois thought more separation would be good for me, so I applied to NNC and was accepted for the 1965 fall term.
I didn't discuss this too much with the folks, though Mom knew of my plans, and I was pleasantly surprised when Dad broached the idea that it might be better for me to go to a different school that was further away. I don't know if Mom had coached him, but when I told him of my NNC plans he didn't seem too surprised. I suspect Dad felt I was too much of a Momma's boy and needed to cut the apron strings. I also suspect he was right!
Mom had always been quite protective of me and kept me on a pretty short leash when she could and my rocky relationship with Dad hadn't helped. I still remember a fight he had with Mom over wanting me to work at Darel's more than I did, and his slamming out of the house yelling that she better teach me how to cook & sew if she wasn't going to let me learn to work with him.
I was pretty mad at him for that, but looking back I see his point, but he never made any noticeable effort to make working with him a pleasant learning experience.
I gotta admit, though, working with him was great preparation for Boot Camp later on. By that time I was used to keeping my mouth shut while being yelled at!
Anyway, that September he & Mom loaded me and my stuff into my car and we headed over Lolo pass for Nampa and a new learning curve. The next two years taught me a lot!
The lessons started with that trip. I drove my little Falcon down there and got 16mpg, Dad drove it back to Montana and got 26mpg. The difference was in the driver! (I still don't get good gas mileage from my rigs - I love horsepower and speed way too much. Dad babied all his mechanical possessions, was meticulous with their maintenance and gentle in their use. His old farm truck is over 50 years old and still in use!)
Anyway - NNC!
We found the campus and located the freshman dorm, then Dad dumped me and my stuff on the sidewalk and left. Time to sink or swim, and maybe time to sort out the boys from the men.
TBC
| HOM: Methane | for everyone |
My brains serves up memories the way a bog serves up swamp gas, in random bubbles that smell funny. Here are some vaguely related events that churned up in memory when I was laying awake last night.
Hunting alone on the "island" in Church Slough one brilliant autumn evening, mostly just admiring the leaves and poking around, I saw an oddly shaped stick in the grass and leaves ahead. I didn't pay much attention to it till I was beside it - and it sprouted wings and took off under my feet. It was a grouse, who was either thinking it was hidden or was as inattentive to the surroundings as I was. I never got off a shot at it...
That island had a hidden treasure - tucked away in the woods was an old crab apple tree, and in the fall it had the sweetest, juiciest apples I have ever tasted. Alone or with Paul, I visited it every chance I got and loaded up on the fruit. I wonder if it is still there?
Dad saw a bunch of pheasants fly into the narrow spit of land between the slough & the river behind what is now Jellar's. He got me, and had me take the boat down to the slough entrance while he walked back through the woods with the dog. The plan was that the birds would flush past me and one of us would get a shot.
I got in position on the bank and was waiting for action when I heard running feet. Thinking it was Julie, the dog, I relaxed, but it was a big doe that burst into sight. She saw me at about ten feet, spun a ninety degree turn and leaped for the river. Reflexes took over and I swung the shotgun like she was a bird taking off and fired. She somersaulted into the river, dead, so I drug her out and waited for Dad. I heard him shoot once, and in a bit he and the dog came walking up with a pheasant they had gotten.
When he asked me if I got anything, I told him I had bagged a big hen - when he saw the deer, he dropped the bird he was carrying!
This was the second shotgunned deer I know of out there. I bird-hunted the island once with friend Billy D, who jumped a doe at close range and reflexively nailed it with his shotgun. The trouble was, season hadn't quite opened yet and it was a couple of scared kids who snuck the deer home to be eaten.
As long as we are talking about illicit food - I remember Gladys telling me of a couple of Vic's escapades.
They needed meat, and there were a lot of deer on their farm up by Columbia Falls, so one night Vic decided to poach one. He made a bad shot! The wounded deer ran over into a neighbor's yard and died and they went hungry.
He tried again, using a flashlight, when a fat young doe was eating apples out of the tree in his field. He flipped on the light, shot, the deer dropped, he flipped the light off, put the gun down, grabbed his knife and took off at a dead run in the dark to make sure it was dead.
Gladys heard his pounding feet, then a meaty "THUD", a crash, and some retching wheezing sounds, so she ran out - and found out that Vic, still night-blind from the flashlight, had run into the three-point hitch on an implement. The hitch knocked the wind out of him and he was moving fast enough that he tipped the implement over.
They got the meat they needed, but Vic wasn't sure it was worth it!
When he was young, Vic used to fish through the ice on the river east of our house. Being optimistic about the size of the fish, he cut a huge hole in the ice, then gathered up his gear and went running out, slipped, and fell into the water through the hole he just made. Luckily he came back to the surface in the hole and not under the ice, but the temperature was well below freezing so he had to take off at a hard run for home to keep from freezing after he struggled out.
Since writing of Vic is stirring up a few more bubbles about him, I might as well put them down before they get lost in the atmosphere.
Vic was passed over for military service in WWII. The doctors said he had a heart murmur and would not take him.
This always bothered Vic, being left behind at a time when so many of his friends and neighbors were off defending their country.
One of his friends who did go, and came back, was Bud Stewart. Bud was a friend of Mom's too, and was a very tough man. Like Vic, he was a good friend and a deadly enemy.
Bud was having coffee with Mom when she saw some trespassers out in the field. When she went out and asked them to leave, Bud was right behind her with his shotgun, and the trespassers were quick to leave.
Bud was in the Pacific, and never told me many details of what he saw and did, but what he did tell me was fairly unforgettable. His one regret was thet he never had a good clear shot at General MacArthur!
Bud was the one that always loaned Vic his ten gauge double barrel for goose hunting, but didn't warn him that it could go off when it wasn't supposed to. Vic was standing by me when he dropped a pair of shells into the gun, and when he snapped it shut both barrels went off. No damage done, except to Vic's hand from recoil and both our systems from shock.
TBC
Hunting alone on the "island" in Church Slough one brilliant autumn evening, mostly just admiring the leaves and poking around, I saw an oddly shaped stick in the grass and leaves ahead. I didn't pay much attention to it till I was beside it - and it sprouted wings and took off under my feet. It was a grouse, who was either thinking it was hidden or was as inattentive to the surroundings as I was. I never got off a shot at it...
That island had a hidden treasure - tucked away in the woods was an old crab apple tree, and in the fall it had the sweetest, juiciest apples I have ever tasted. Alone or with Paul, I visited it every chance I got and loaded up on the fruit. I wonder if it is still there?
Dad saw a bunch of pheasants fly into the narrow spit of land between the slough & the river behind what is now Jellar's. He got me, and had me take the boat down to the slough entrance while he walked back through the woods with the dog. The plan was that the birds would flush past me and one of us would get a shot.
I got in position on the bank and was waiting for action when I heard running feet. Thinking it was Julie, the dog, I relaxed, but it was a big doe that burst into sight. She saw me at about ten feet, spun a ninety degree turn and leaped for the river. Reflexes took over and I swung the shotgun like she was a bird taking off and fired. She somersaulted into the river, dead, so I drug her out and waited for Dad. I heard him shoot once, and in a bit he and the dog came walking up with a pheasant they had gotten.
When he asked me if I got anything, I told him I had bagged a big hen - when he saw the deer, he dropped the bird he was carrying!
This was the second shotgunned deer I know of out there. I bird-hunted the island once with friend Billy D, who jumped a doe at close range and reflexively nailed it with his shotgun. The trouble was, season hadn't quite opened yet and it was a couple of scared kids who snuck the deer home to be eaten.
As long as we are talking about illicit food - I remember Gladys telling me of a couple of Vic's escapades.
They needed meat, and there were a lot of deer on their farm up by Columbia Falls, so one night Vic decided to poach one. He made a bad shot! The wounded deer ran over into a neighbor's yard and died and they went hungry.
He tried again, using a flashlight, when a fat young doe was eating apples out of the tree in his field. He flipped on the light, shot, the deer dropped, he flipped the light off, put the gun down, grabbed his knife and took off at a dead run in the dark to make sure it was dead.
Gladys heard his pounding feet, then a meaty "THUD", a crash, and some retching wheezing sounds, so she ran out - and found out that Vic, still night-blind from the flashlight, had run into the three-point hitch on an implement. The hitch knocked the wind out of him and he was moving fast enough that he tipped the implement over.
They got the meat they needed, but Vic wasn't sure it was worth it!
When he was young, Vic used to fish through the ice on the river east of our house. Being optimistic about the size of the fish, he cut a huge hole in the ice, then gathered up his gear and went running out, slipped, and fell into the water through the hole he just made. Luckily he came back to the surface in the hole and not under the ice, but the temperature was well below freezing so he had to take off at a hard run for home to keep from freezing after he struggled out.
Since writing of Vic is stirring up a few more bubbles about him, I might as well put them down before they get lost in the atmosphere.
Vic was passed over for military service in WWII. The doctors said he had a heart murmur and would not take him.
This always bothered Vic, being left behind at a time when so many of his friends and neighbors were off defending their country.
One of his friends who did go, and came back, was Bud Stewart. Bud was a friend of Mom's too, and was a very tough man. Like Vic, he was a good friend and a deadly enemy.
Bud was having coffee with Mom when she saw some trespassers out in the field. When she went out and asked them to leave, Bud was right behind her with his shotgun, and the trespassers were quick to leave.
Bud was in the Pacific, and never told me many details of what he saw and did, but what he did tell me was fairly unforgettable. His one regret was thet he never had a good clear shot at General MacArthur!
Bud was the one that always loaned Vic his ten gauge double barrel for goose hunting, but didn't warn him that it could go off when it wasn't supposed to. Vic was standing by me when he dropped a pair of shells into the gun, and when he snapped it shut both barrels went off. No damage done, except to Vic's hand from recoil and both our systems from shock.
TBC
| Power Hammer | for everyone |
Like Grampa used:
This fresh memory bubble just popped up! The only pun I ever heard from Vic!
When I got my first car, I took it over to show Vic. The conversation went like this:
Vic: "What did you get?"
Me: " A Ford Falcon!"
Vic: "Yes, you always get a Falcon when you buy a Ford!"
Vic liked Dodges, not Fords....
Told ya some of the bubbles smelled funny!
TBC
When I got my first car, I took it over to show Vic. The conversation went like this:
Vic: "What did you get?"
Me: " A Ford Falcon!"
Vic: "Yes, you always get a Falcon when you buy a Ford!"
Vic liked Dodges, not Fords....
Told ya some of the bubbles smelled funny!
TBC
Tags: | Edit Tags Saturday March 8, 2008 - 10:39am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Time to stir up the mud in a new arm of the bog: NNC.
Lois & Gordon thought I should go to Northwest Nazarene College. It had a morally cleaner environment than MSU and had the advantage of being 500 miles away in a different state.
At MSU, I made it home every few weekends and called home a lot. Lois thought more separation would be good for me, so I applied to NNC and was accepted for the 1965 fall term.
I didn't discuss this too much with the folks, though Mom knew of my plans, and I was pleasantly surprised when Dad broached the idea that it might be better for me to go to a different school that was further away. I don't know if Mom had coached him, but when I told him of my NNC plans he didn't seem too surprised. I suspect Dad felt I was too much of a Momma's boy and needed to cut the apron strings. I also suspect he was right!
Mom had always been quite protective of me and kept me on a pretty short leash when she could and my rocky relationship with Dad hadn't helped. I still remember a fight he had with Mom over wanting me to work at Darel's more than I did, and his slamming out of the house yelling that she better teach me how to cook & sew if she wasn't going to let me learn to work with him.
I was pretty mad at him for that, but looking back I see his point, but he never made any noticeable effort to make working with him a pleasant learning experience.
I gotta admit, though, working with him was great preparation for Boot Camp later on. By that time I was used to keeping my mouth shut while being yelled at!
Anyway, that September he & Mom loaded me and my stuff into my car and we headed over Lolo pass for Nampa and a new learning curve. The next two years taught me a lot!
The lessons started with that trip. I drove my little Falcon down there and got 16mpg, Dad drove it back to Montana and got 26mpg. The difference was in the driver! (I still don't get good gas mileage from my rigs - I love horsepower and speed way too much. Dad babied all his mechanical possessions, was meticulous with their maintenance and gentle in their use. His old farm truck is over 50 years old and still in use!)
Anyway - NNC!
We found the campus and located the freshman dorm, then Dad dumped me and my stuff on the sidewalk and left. Time to sink or swim, and maybe time to sort out the boys from the men.
TBC
Lois & Gordon thought I should go to Northwest Nazarene College. It had a morally cleaner environment than MSU and had the advantage of being 500 miles away in a different state.
At MSU, I made it home every few weekends and called home a lot. Lois thought more separation would be good for me, so I applied to NNC and was accepted for the 1965 fall term.
I didn't discuss this too much with the folks, though Mom knew of my plans, and I was pleasantly surprised when Dad broached the idea that it might be better for me to go to a different school that was further away. I don't know if Mom had coached him, but when I told him of my NNC plans he didn't seem too surprised. I suspect Dad felt I was too much of a Momma's boy and needed to cut the apron strings. I also suspect he was right!
Mom had always been quite protective of me and kept me on a pretty short leash when she could and my rocky relationship with Dad hadn't helped. I still remember a fight he had with Mom over wanting me to work at Darel's more than I did, and his slamming out of the house yelling that she better teach me how to cook & sew if she wasn't going to let me learn to work with him.
I was pretty mad at him for that, but looking back I see his point, but he never made any noticeable effort to make working with him a pleasant learning experience.
I gotta admit, though, working with him was great preparation for Boot Camp later on. By that time I was used to keeping my mouth shut while being yelled at!
Anyway, that September he & Mom loaded me and my stuff into my car and we headed over Lolo pass for Nampa and a new learning curve. The next two years taught me a lot!
The lessons started with that trip. I drove my little Falcon down there and got 16mpg, Dad drove it back to Montana and got 26mpg. The difference was in the driver! (I still don't get good gas mileage from my rigs - I love horsepower and speed way too much. Dad babied all his mechanical possessions, was meticulous with their maintenance and gentle in their use. His old farm truck is over 50 years old and still in use!)
Anyway - NNC!
We found the campus and located the freshman dorm, then Dad dumped me and my stuff on the sidewalk and left. Time to sink or swim, and maybe time to sort out the boys from the men.
TBC
Tags: | Edit Tags Saturday March 8, 2008 - 10:29am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
My brains serves up memories the way a bog serves up swamp gas, in random bubbles that smell funny. Here are some vaguely related events that churned up in memory when I was laying awake last night.
Hunting alone on the "island" in Church Slough one brilliant autumn evening, mostly just admiring the leaves and poking around, I saw an oddly shaped stick in the grass and leaves ahead. I didn't pay much attention to it till I was beside it - and it sprouted wings and took off under my feet. It was a grouse, who was either thinking it was hidden or was as inattentive to the surroundings as I was. I never got off a shot at it...
That island had a hidden treasure - tucked away in the woods was an old crab apple tree, and in the fall it had the sweetest, juiciest apples I have ever tasted. Alone or with Paul, I visited it every chance I got and loaded up on the fruit. I wonder if it is still there?
Dad saw a bunch of pheasants fly into the narrow spit of land between the slough & the river behind what is now Jellar's. He got me, and had me take the boat down to the slough entrance while he walked back through the woods with the dog. The plan was that the birds would flush past me and one of us would get a shot.
I got in position on the bank and was waiting for action when I heard running feet. Thinking it was Julie, the dog, I relaxed, but it was a big doe that burst into sight. She saw me at about ten feet, spun a ninety degree turn and leaped for the river. Reflexes took over and I swung the shotgun like she was a bird taking off and fired. She somersaulted into the river, dead, so I drug her out and waited for Dad. I heard him shoot once, and in a bit he and the dog came walking up with a pheasant they had gotten.
When he asked me if I got anything, I told him I had bagged a big hen - when he saw the deer, he dropped the bird he was carrying!
This was the second shotgunned deer I know of out there. I bird-hunted the island once with friend Billy D, who jumped a doe at close range and reflexively nailed it with his shotgun. The trouble was, season hadn't quite opened yet and it was a couple of scared kids who snuck the deer home to be eaten.
As long as we are talking about illicit food - I remember Gladys telling me of a couple of Vic's escapades.
They needed meat, and there were a lot of deer on their farm up by Columbia Falls, so one night Vic decided to poach one. He made a bad shot! The wounded deer ran over into a neighbor's yard and died and they went hungry.
He tried again, using a flashlight, when a fat young doe was eating apples out of the tree in his field. He flipped on the light, shot, the deer dropped, he flipped the light off, put the gun down, grabbed his knife and took off at a dead run in the dark to make sure it was dead.
Gladys heard his pounding feet, then a meaty "THUD", a crash, and some retching wheezing sounds, so she ran out - and found out that Vic, still night-blind from the flashlight, had run into the three-point hitch on an implement. The hitch knocked the wind out of him and he was moving fast enough that he tipped the implement over.
They got the meat they needed, but Vic wasn't sure it was worth it!
When he was young, Vic used to fish through the ice on the river east of our house. Being optimistic about the size of the fish, he cut a huge hole in the ice, then gathered up his gear and went running out, slipped, and fell into the water through the hole he just made. Luckily he came back to the surface in the hole and not under the ice, but the temperature was well below freezing so he had to take off at a hard run for home to keep from freezing after he struggled out.
Since writing of Vic is stirring up a few more bubbles about him, I might as well put them down before they get lost in the atmosphere.
Vic was passed over for military service in WWII. The doctors said he had a heart murmur and would not take him.
This always bothered Vic, being left behind at a time when so many of his friends and neighbors were off defending their country.
One of his friends who did go, and came back, was Bud Stewart. Bud was a friend of Mom's too, and was a very tough man. Like Vic, he was a good friend and a deadly enemy.
Bud was having coffee with Mom when she saw some trespassers out in the field. When she went out and asked them to leave, Bud was right behind her with his shotgun, and the trespassers were quick to leave.
Bud was in the Pacific, and never told me many details of what he saw and did, but what he did tell me was fairly unforgettable. His one regret was thet he never had a good clear shot at General MacArthur!
Bud was the one that always loaned Vic his ten gauge double barrel for goose hunting, but didn't warn him that it could go off when it wasn't supposed to. Vic was standing by me when he dropped a pair of shells into the gun, and when he snapped it shut both barrels went off. No damage done, except to Vic's hand from recoil and both our systems from shock.
TBC
Hunting alone on the "island" in Church Slough one brilliant autumn evening, mostly just admiring the leaves and poking around, I saw an oddly shaped stick in the grass and leaves ahead. I didn't pay much attention to it till I was beside it - and it sprouted wings and took off under my feet. It was a grouse, who was either thinking it was hidden or was as inattentive to the surroundings as I was. I never got off a shot at it...
That island had a hidden treasure - tucked away in the woods was an old crab apple tree, and in the fall it had the sweetest, juiciest apples I have ever tasted. Alone or with Paul, I visited it every chance I got and loaded up on the fruit. I wonder if it is still there?
Dad saw a bunch of pheasants fly into the narrow spit of land between the slough & the river behind what is now Jellar's. He got me, and had me take the boat down to the slough entrance while he walked back through the woods with the dog. The plan was that the birds would flush past me and one of us would get a shot.
I got in position on the bank and was waiting for action when I heard running feet. Thinking it was Julie, the dog, I relaxed, but it was a big doe that burst into sight. She saw me at about ten feet, spun a ninety degree turn and leaped for the river. Reflexes took over and I swung the shotgun like she was a bird taking off and fired. She somersaulted into the river, dead, so I drug her out and waited for Dad. I heard him shoot once, and in a bit he and the dog came walking up with a pheasant they had gotten.
When he asked me if I got anything, I told him I had bagged a big hen - when he saw the deer, he dropped the bird he was carrying!
This was the second shotgunned deer I know of out there. I bird-hunted the island once with friend Billy D, who jumped a doe at close range and reflexively nailed it with his shotgun. The trouble was, season hadn't quite opened yet and it was a couple of scared kids who snuck the deer home to be eaten.
As long as we are talking about illicit food - I remember Gladys telling me of a couple of Vic's escapades.
They needed meat, and there were a lot of deer on their farm up by Columbia Falls, so one night Vic decided to poach one. He made a bad shot! The wounded deer ran over into a neighbor's yard and died and they went hungry.
He tried again, using a flashlight, when a fat young doe was eating apples out of the tree in his field. He flipped on the light, shot, the deer dropped, he flipped the light off, put the gun down, grabbed his knife and took off at a dead run in the dark to make sure it was dead.
Gladys heard his pounding feet, then a meaty "THUD", a crash, and some retching wheezing sounds, so she ran out - and found out that Vic, still night-blind from the flashlight, had run into the three-point hitch on an implement. The hitch knocked the wind out of him and he was moving fast enough that he tipped the implement over.
They got the meat they needed, but Vic wasn't sure it was worth it!
When he was young, Vic used to fish through the ice on the river east of our house. Being optimistic about the size of the fish, he cut a huge hole in the ice, then gathered up his gear and went running out, slipped, and fell into the water through the hole he just made. Luckily he came back to the surface in the hole and not under the ice, but the temperature was well below freezing so he had to take off at a hard run for home to keep from freezing after he struggled out.
Since writing of Vic is stirring up a few more bubbles about him, I might as well put them down before they get lost in the atmosphere.
Vic was passed over for military service in WWII. The doctors said he had a heart murmur and would not take him.
This always bothered Vic, being left behind at a time when so many of his friends and neighbors were off defending their country.
One of his friends who did go, and came back, was Bud Stewart. Bud was a friend of Mom's too, and was a very tough man. Like Vic, he was a good friend and a deadly enemy.
Bud was having coffee with Mom when she saw some trespassers out in the field. When she went out and asked them to leave, Bud was right behind her with his shotgun, and the trespassers were quick to leave.
Bud was in the Pacific, and never told me many details of what he saw and did, but what he did tell me was fairly unforgettable. His one regret was thet he never had a good clear shot at General MacArthur!
Bud was the one that always loaned Vic his ten gauge double barrel for goose hunting, but didn't warn him that it could go off when it wasn't supposed to. Vic was standing by me when he dropped a pair of shells into the gun, and when he snapped it shut both barrels went off. No damage done, except to Vic's hand from recoil and both our systems from shock.
TBC
Tags: | Edit Tags Friday March 7, 2008 - 05:30pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Like Grampa used:
Tags: | Edit Tags Friday March 7, 2008 - 10:26am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
9
- HOM: Fill-ins & Farces
- Graduation. I forgot to mention gifts - the only two I remember are (were?) a knife from Uncle Rudy and a watch from Mom & Dad. I have no clue what the knife's fate was, but the Bulova is buried in the mud at the bottom of Cam Rahn Bay a few hundred yards out from the old pier the Swift boats and PGs used.
Nothing glamorous about losing it - I was swinging a rubber bumper over the side when I hooked the watch band on the line - Ping! Splash! Crap! I eventually replaced it with an Omega from the Navy Exchange in Yokuska, Japan.
After the '64 flood receded, I made my first trip around Hungry Horse reservoir and into the South Fork with Vic. It was a great day! I found out that driving on the corrugations made by Cat tracks made the car sound just like a bearing went out, that spinning your tires in shale could give you a flat tire, and that shooting just under the lily pad a frog is perched on pops the frog a couple of feet into the air without hurting it, and doing so caught Vic's funny bone. Vic had a wonderfully unforgettable laugh!
We made other trips there elk hunting in later years, but none were as much fun as that summertime day of play.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Tuesday March 4, 2008 - 12:08pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Rather, "After Graduation". More memories from earlier years will probably, like idiocy, bloom; I will deal with them as they pop up.
The summer of 1964 was pretty much like the preceding summers, with two or three cuttings of hay to be put up on five or six different farms and free time between cuttings and cleaning pig pens and chicken houses to play. It was the last summer ever in that pattern, though I didn't realize it. It was that fall that Dad & Darel lost their business and Darel lost his home when the bank foreclosed on them. The flood loss of breeding stock and young animals to sell bankrupted them.
Dad had either given up on teaching me to do field work or preferred to do it himself so I only had the normal chores of watering the chickens, mowing the lawn and whatever else popped up. This gave me time to play in the woods. (Fishing in the slough by the house was changed forever by the flood, I pretty much gave it up.)
I had planned on heading for MSU in Missoula that fall, but Dad made a suggestion that surprised me - he thought I should take the fall off and just go hunting. He said it might be the only opportunity I would ever have to do something like that. (He also commented that college separated the men from the boys, so perhaps he was thinking of my lackluster academic career and was trying to postpone the inevitable.)
I started MSU (now UofM) in January of 1965, majoring in wildlife technology and rooming with a friend named Doug Barry in 171 Elrod Hall. Once again I started out lost...
I missed all of the freshman orientation by starting in the winter quarter, so in everything from the required ROTC to classroom locations I was totally,and sometimes literally, out of step! In addition, I seemed to have my alternate classes on alternate ends of the campus so I ended up trotting out a shoelace pattern between buildings (When I could find them!) in the course of a day. I was back at the beginning of the learning curve.
High point and low points? I got into the ROTC-sponsored pistol marksmanship program and actually won an award for most improved marksman - I went from horrible to merely awful. (I loved that program! All the free ammo - .22 & .45 - you could shoot and the use of target pistols!) I bought my first target pistol from a guy in the program, a High Standard Supermatic Citation that looked like a Buck Roger's spacegun.)
I also shot a pistol I have yearned for ever since. It was a Ruger bull-barrel taget .22 that had been customized by a famous pistolsmith named Clark. It hand custom grips that fit my hand perfectly, and my scores jumped 25% when I used it. Unfortunately the owner wouldn't sell it at any price.
We shot at on-campus indoor range and also outdoors at a range by the smokejumper's school at the Missoula airport. Sgt. French, in charge of the program, told me I had too many bad habits ingrained to ever be a master shot.
I took swimming and softball for my P.E. classes, and the swimming class was a great help in boot camp later on. I had the lifesaving side-stroke and the frog kick down pat! In softball, I was my usual unathletic klutz, but for the final exam - hitting, catching a fly & catching a grounder - I did beautifully. I caught the grounder when I realized it was about to hit me in the face - it hit something, bounced up, I closed my eyes and put the glove up for protection, and the ball hit the pocket perfectly. Catching the fly was equally accidental. I am one of those white boys that can't jump, but I did, and my wild stab in the air snagged the ball.
The coach commented that my performance was the biggest surprise of his day, which was a left-handed compliment if I ever heard one.
Doug, my roomie, was into physical fitness. He never talked me into following his regimen but we did some hiking up on the hills around the "M".
He liked to go out and run through the surrounding neighborhood at night, but one night he was cutting full speed through a dark back yard and didn't see the clothesline, which caught him right under the chin and laid him out flat. I think he had a couple of episodes with dogs that slowed his running a bit too.
I used to carry my room key on a long heavy cord around my neck so I wouldn't lose it or have to fumble for it in a pocket when I had a load of books, and one night I had just put the key in the lock and turned it when Doug heard me and threw the door open for me - and gave me this wieird rope burn on my neck...
I didn't have the math background the school said I needed, so I had to take a zero-credit bonehead math course along with old classmates Jack McKay & Mike Adams. I guess I finally applied myself, because when we took the final exam the teacher took the tests the three of us turned in, dumped them in the trash without looking at them, and told us we passed.
I remember a class I really enjoyed, on geology, and I still remember one of the questions on a test - "What weighs more, a bucket of sand or a bucket of rocks?" I put sand, assuming less airspace beteen particles, and so did the rest of the class. The teacher reamed us all out for missing that, saying that since obviously a single large rock weighed more than the equivalent amount of sand, it should be obvious that a bucket of rocks would outweigh a bucket of sand.
I still think the question was ambiguous & unfair...
One regret from that term? Dorothy Johnson, author of "The Hanging Tree", "The Man Called Horse", "The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance" and other classic stories was teaching there and I never took the opportunity to meet her.
Other memories? The Indian kids, mostly forestry students, who had this test of "macho" I used to watch. Two of them would lay their right forearms together, then light a cigarette and lay it in the groove the arms formed, then stare each other in the eye to see who would be the first to flinch or jerk away.
Mike & Jack, mentioned earlier, got into an extreme physical fitness class, all work and no play. They did things like piggyback races up to the "M" and back. I haven't seen or heard of either of them since and have often wondered where they are and what they ended up doing.
The first time I was ever in a car at speeds in excess of 100mph was riding from Missoula to Kalispell with them in a big Oldsmobile Mike owned, with him driving and swigging beer. It was exhilerating, and exceedingly stupid!
How did I do gradewise? A little better than high school, to Dad's surprise, with a mix of B's and C's, but was still a boy....
TBC
The summer of 1964 was pretty much like the preceding summers, with two or three cuttings of hay to be put up on five or six different farms and free time between cuttings and cleaning pig pens and chicken houses to play. It was the last summer ever in that pattern, though I didn't realize it. It was that fall that Dad & Darel lost their business and Darel lost his home when the bank foreclosed on them. The flood loss of breeding stock and young animals to sell bankrupted them.
Dad had either given up on teaching me to do field work or preferred to do it himself so I only had the normal chores of watering the chickens, mowing the lawn and whatever else popped up. This gave me time to play in the woods. (Fishing in the slough by the house was changed forever by the flood, I pretty much gave it up.)
I had planned on heading for MSU in Missoula that fall, but Dad made a suggestion that surprised me - he thought I should take the fall off and just go hunting. He said it might be the only opportunity I would ever have to do something like that. (He also commented that college separated the men from the boys, so perhaps he was thinking of my lackluster academic career and was trying to postpone the inevitable.)
I started MSU (now UofM) in January of 1965, majoring in wildlife technology and rooming with a friend named Doug Barry in 171 Elrod Hall. Once again I started out lost...
I missed all of the freshman orientation by starting in the winter quarter, so in everything from the required ROTC to classroom locations I was totally,and sometimes literally, out of step! In addition, I seemed to have my alternate classes on alternate ends of the campus so I ended up trotting out a shoelace pattern between buildings (When I could find them!) in the course of a day. I was back at the beginning of the learning curve.
High point and low points? I got into the ROTC-sponsored pistol marksmanship program and actually won an award for most improved marksman - I went from horrible to merely awful. (I loved that program! All the free ammo - .22 & .45 - you could shoot and the use of target pistols!) I bought my first target pistol from a guy in the program, a High Standard Supermatic Citation that looked like a Buck Roger's spacegun.)
I also shot a pistol I have yearned for ever since. It was a Ruger bull-barrel taget .22 that had been customized by a famous pistolsmith named Clark. It hand custom grips that fit my hand perfectly, and my scores jumped 25% when I used it. Unfortunately the owner wouldn't sell it at any price.
We shot at on-campus indoor range and also outdoors at a range by the smokejumper's school at the Missoula airport. Sgt. French, in charge of the program, told me I had too many bad habits ingrained to ever be a master shot.
I took swimming and softball for my P.E. classes, and the swimming class was a great help in boot camp later on. I had the lifesaving side-stroke and the frog kick down pat! In softball, I was my usual unathletic klutz, but for the final exam - hitting, catching a fly & catching a grounder - I did beautifully. I caught the grounder when I realized it was about to hit me in the face - it hit something, bounced up, I closed my eyes and put the glove up for protection, and the ball hit the pocket perfectly. Catching the fly was equally accidental. I am one of those white boys that can't jump, but I did, and my wild stab in the air snagged the ball.
The coach commented that my performance was the biggest surprise of his day, which was a left-handed compliment if I ever heard one.
Doug, my roomie, was into physical fitness. He never talked me into following his regimen but we did some hiking up on the hills around the "M".
He liked to go out and run through the surrounding neighborhood at night, but one night he was cutting full speed through a dark back yard and didn't see the clothesline, which caught him right under the chin and laid him out flat. I think he had a couple of episodes with dogs that slowed his running a bit too.
I used to carry my room key on a long heavy cord around my neck so I wouldn't lose it or have to fumble for it in a pocket when I had a load of books, and one night I had just put the key in the lock and turned it when Doug heard me and threw the door open for me - and gave me this wieird rope burn on my neck...
I didn't have the math background the school said I needed, so I had to take a zero-credit bonehead math course along with old classmates Jack McKay & Mike Adams. I guess I finally applied myself, because when we took the final exam the teacher took the tests the three of us turned in, dumped them in the trash without looking at them, and told us we passed.
I remember a class I really enjoyed, on geology, and I still remember one of the questions on a test - "What weighs more, a bucket of sand or a bucket of rocks?" I put sand, assuming less airspace beteen particles, and so did the rest of the class. The teacher reamed us all out for missing that, saying that since obviously a single large rock weighed more than the equivalent amount of sand, it should be obvious that a bucket of rocks would outweigh a bucket of sand.
I still think the question was ambiguous & unfair...
One regret from that term? Dorothy Johnson, author of "The Hanging Tree", "The Man Called Horse", "The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance" and other classic stories was teaching there and I never took the opportunity to meet her.
Other memories? The Indian kids, mostly forestry students, who had this test of "macho" I used to watch. Two of them would lay their right forearms together, then light a cigarette and lay it in the groove the arms formed, then stare each other in the eye to see who would be the first to flinch or jerk away.
Mike & Jack, mentioned earlier, got into an extreme physical fitness class, all work and no play. They did things like piggyback races up to the "M" and back. I haven't seen or heard of either of them since and have often wondered where they are and what they ended up doing.
The first time I was ever in a car at speeds in excess of 100mph was riding from Missoula to Kalispell with them in a big Oldsmobile Mike owned, with him driving and swigging beer. It was exhilerating, and exceedingly stupid!
How did I do gradewise? A little better than high school, to Dad's surprise, with a mix of B's and C's, but was still a boy....
TBC
Tags: | Edit Tags Monday March 3, 2008 - 02:16pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Ian was out in the yard at his parent's house plinking with his Remington 12C and watching the geese, up high and far away, heading south. More as a gesture than a serious attempt to shoot one, he aimed way above and way ahead of a small flock passing a few hundred yards behind the house and fired.
A few seconds later, one of the geese dropped out of the V formation, gliding and tumbling till it hit the ground, dead. Ian always claimed it was a micracle shot.
He took a long shot at a huge hawk, a hazard to small farm animals and fair game in thise days, and knocked it down. When he walked up to it it was still alive, so being an old farm boy he picked it up to wring its neck. The hawk was faster than he was and sank its talons through the palm of his hand; when he reacted and tried to grab it with his other hand the hawk grabbed it with the other foot.
I never heard how he got out of that, but assume he used his foot to kill it and then brute force to tear his hands free. He had problems with infection and the hands took a long time to heal.
Many, many, years later I stood in that yard and bagged the first bullhead catfish of my life as it flew over the house.
I had a new Ruger .22 auto and was plinking at cans with it when an osprey flew over the house.
Being, young, dumb, and country-raised, I popped off a couple of shots at it and came close enough to make it swerve, dive & jig, and drop something it was carrying.
The "something" was a bullhead, and I have had a lot of fun by watching people's faces as I tell how I shot it out of the air.
TBC
A few seconds later, one of the geese dropped out of the V formation, gliding and tumbling till it hit the ground, dead. Ian always claimed it was a micracle shot.
He took a long shot at a huge hawk, a hazard to small farm animals and fair game in thise days, and knocked it down. When he walked up to it it was still alive, so being an old farm boy he picked it up to wring its neck. The hawk was faster than he was and sank its talons through the palm of his hand; when he reacted and tried to grab it with his other hand the hawk grabbed it with the other foot.
I never heard how he got out of that, but assume he used his foot to kill it and then brute force to tear his hands free. He had problems with infection and the hands took a long time to heal.
Many, many, years later I stood in that yard and bagged the first bullhead catfish of my life as it flew over the house.
I had a new Ruger .22 auto and was plinking at cans with it when an osprey flew over the house.
Being, young, dumb, and country-raised, I popped off a couple of shots at it and came close enough to make it swerve, dive & jig, and drop something it was carrying.
The "something" was a bullhead, and I have had a lot of fun by watching people's faces as I tell how I shot it out of the air.
TBC
Tags: | Edit Tags Sunday March 2, 2008 - 10:05am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
I knew an odd little kid.
He seemed to have no empathy. He would catch flies and pull their wings off and then stick pins in them. He would burn ants and bugs with a magnifying glass. He strangled his dog for fun, killed a cat with a knife.
I have often wondered what happened to him. Did he die? Is he still around but hidden? Was this psychpathic behavior a normal stage that all kids go through and he outgrew it?
He scared me, I hope I never run into him again.
He seemed to have no empathy. He would catch flies and pull their wings off and then stick pins in them. He would burn ants and bugs with a magnifying glass. He strangled his dog for fun, killed a cat with a knife.
I have often wondered what happened to him. Did he die? Is he still around but hidden? Was this psychpathic behavior a normal stage that all kids go through and he outgrew it?
He scared me, I hope I never run into him again.
Tags: | Edit Tags Sunday March 2, 2008 - 09:31am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
- THIS IS THEFT!
- But, it is soooo good I can't resist
Please be sure to go to the website and read it and comment!Feb. 27
Bookshelf and Self
“It is unacceptable to display any book in a public space of your home if you have not read it.” So runs the “prime directive” for bookshelf etiquette, as issued by a blogger for Time magazine named Matt Seligman. At The American Prospect a couple of weeks ago, Ezra Klein responded in terms that are no less categorical – though hardly more sensible, it seems to me.
Related stories
- Switching Sides of the Table, Feb. 22
- Growing — and Defining — ‘Global Studies’, Feb. 21
- Man Bites Dog, Nov. 21
- A Swift Kick for Us Humanists, June 15, 2006
- Upturn for Science Doctorates, Nov. 28, 2005
“Bookshelves are not for displaying books you’ve read,” says Klein; “those books go in your office, or near your bed, or on your Facebook profile. Rather, the books on your shelves are there to convey the type of person you would like to be. I am the type of person who would read long biographies of Lyndon Johnson, despite not being the type of person who has read any long biographies of Lyndon Johnson. I am the type of person who is very interested in a history of the Reformation, but am not, as it happens, the type of person with the time to read 900 pages on the subject. More importantly, I am the type of person who amasses many books, on all sorts of subjects. I’m pretty sure that’s what a bookshelf is there to prove. The reading of those books is entirely incidental. The question becomes how we’ll project all of this when Kindles takes off and all our books are digital.”
There is bravery in such candor. The word “poseur” is still around, after all, even if the people who study consumer behavior, and try to channel it, have coined the kinder and gentler term “aspirational taste” for this sort of thing. David Brooks could probably get a best-selling analysis of the American middle class out of the contrast between Seligman’s moralistic injunction and Klein’s jaunty expression of dandyism. Just throw in some references to the difference between Blue and Red states, and the thing writes itself.
But after a grueling weekend of trying to impose some order on my study, I’m struck, not by the contrast between Seligman and Klein, but by the degree to which they share common assumptions. Those assumptions are foreign to my own experience; and so it proves impossible to extract from either of them any maxim applying to local circumstances.
Klein and Seligman seem to share a belief that book ownership can, and indeed should, serve as a medium for displaying something important about yourself. They signify either what you already know or whom you would like to be — and (this is the major point) they do so for someone else. By this logic, bookshelves are a medium of social interaction. As a format for the “performance of self,” they transform one’s books into a way of attaining, or at least claiming, status. Hence the need to come up with rules, however informal, for what is permissible.
All of which makes perfect sense if and only if you are not a total nerd. Which, all things considered, is a pretty big “if.” A very different set of principles is in effect if you are someone for whom reading itself actually counts as one of the primary forms of social interaction. It’s not that you don’t have “aspirational taste,” of a kind. But the aspiration plays itself out in a very different manner — with different consequences for how your living space is organized.
My experience (which can’t be unique) is that some books end up accumulating out of a misguided attempt to win the approval of authors already well-entrenched on my shelves. A few years back, for example, Slavoj Zizek started to insist that I had to be familiar with the work of Alain Badiou – a French poststructuralist philosopher whose work I had never heard of, let alone read. Well, OK, sure. Thanks to some busy translators, Badiou volumes started crowding in, next to all the Zizek titles.
But in short order, Badiou lets it be known that I am expected to understand something about mathematical set theory — and furthermore should come to appreciate one particular approach to formalizing the basic axioms. Chances are, that second part is just not going to happen. I am willing to try to learn to recognize a formalized axiom when I see one, but can promise no more, and even that much is probably pushing it. So, anyway, off to the nearby secondhand bookshop in search of a couple of introductory works. They are terrifying. The shelf in question is starting to turn into a neighborhood I am afraid to visit.
But that is not the real problem. Around here, the “prime directive” is that there should not be any books on the floor. If a marriage is its own little civilization, this is among the basic clauses in our social contract. Insofar as “aspiration” comes into play, I find it operating at the level of daydreams about replacing one of the closets or windows with another set of shelves.
Clothing and the outside world are much overrated, in my opinion, which does not carry very much weight in this particular case. Bookshelves are storage; that is all. The idea of using them for “display” seems cute and improbable.
The online conversation generated by Seligman’s and Klein’s remarks has at times reflected a kind of guilt that no really bookish person would feel. For there are, it seems, people who feel stress about owning volumes they haven’t read. Evidently some of them believe a kind of statute of limitations is in effect. If you don’t expect to read something in, say, the next year, then, it is wrong to own it. And in many cases, their superegos have taken on the qualities of a really stern accountant — coming up with estimates of what percentage of the books on their shelves they have, or haven’t, gotten around to reading. Guilt and anxiety reinforce one another.
All of this reminds me of a friend who, while in high school, got about a hundred pages into Atlas Shrugged and realized that she loathed both Ayn Rand’s prose and ideas. But she kept slogging through the book, as often as she could work up the will to do so, and finally finished it sometime around her junior year of college. Persistence is a virtue, but it is not the only virtue, and sometimes it is really not good for you.
Beyond any particular virtue is the wisdom to know when and how to keep it in check. Just as persistence can get warped into a vice, so can the urge to be exhaustive, or the impulse to follow up the leads indicated in every footnote. The latter impulse is dangerous, for it leads to misanthropy: A scholar’s seemingly authoritative citations will sometimes turn out to have been pilfered directly from someone else’s seemingly authoritative citations — without any actual reading of the texts involved, since given that the mistakes are preserved intact. It can be a sad day for one’s sense of human nature to discover this.
If you are going to have a moralizing voice in your head, maybe it’s best for it to sound like Francis Bacon, whose essays from the beginning of the 17th century are so much more sermon-like than the ones by Montaigne he was imitating. But “Of Studies” seems like a reasoned statement by a man of the world. “Some books are to be tasted,” writes Bacon, “others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”
Likewise for bookshelves. Many items there are staples. Others are ingredients that, like salt, are only good in combination with something else. Some things you keep around are healthy, if not very tasty, while a few might count as junk food. (A couple of scholarly presses are indeed known for their Pop-Tarts.) And it’s hardly a decent pantry if you don’t have a few impulse purchases you later regret, or gourmandizing experiments that didn’t quite pan out. No formal rule can determine what belongs on the shelf and what doesn’t. It is, finally, a matter of taste.
Scott McLemee writes Intellectual Affairs each week. He also blogs at Quick Study.
Comments
You can’t have too many
I don’t know about most people, but my books overflow the shelves and tables and end up every flat surface in the house and office. There is a certain comfort knowing there is always a new book to read, a reference tool to consult, an author to experience, knowledge to gain. You cannot have too many books to consult, savor, and read over and over again.
Miriam Kahn, at 7:55 am EST on February 27, 2008
Personal Library
I very much enjoyed this piece. My partner and I are known for our massive book collection, but that is not why we have it. We have a large personal library because we have to read for our jobs, like to read for pleasure, and because I like to collect certain kinds of books (dictionaries, children’s books—we have no kids—and cookbooks). We have read most of the books on our shelves, but there are many we have not.
Having a selection of books I haven’t read makes it easier for me to escape the dissertation occasionally without having to go to the bookstore. I have my own bookstore readily available with pre-selected books. I have certainly picked up things I shouldn’t have. I am still at war with White Teeth because it is far too depressing to get through. And there are a couple of things that must have been gifts because I would never have bought them myself.
As for what our books say about us...well, ours tell the truth. They reveal areas of difficulty for us and things we needed to learn more about. They reveal our politics and our educational backgrounds. They say A LOT about our professions. And they give some indication that there is generally something good to eat for dinner. But you could learn that in a three-minute conversation.
That anyone would take the time to establish rules or ‘bookshelf etiquette’ means that s/he doesn’t have enough to do. Ultimately I agree with the author, it’s all a matter of taste. But we have to remember that shelves are utilitarian—they are for storage not for making statements.
Adriane, at 8:15 am EST on February 27, 2008
The Book on the Bookshelf
“The Book on the Bookshelf” is the title of Henry Petrokski l999 text. I bought it new, it sits on my shelf in a privilege place, and I look forward to reading it but for now I like having it.
My point is that if our reading lives are lively, we are in and out of texts all the time. I am fortunate enough in space and money for books, and I can’t think of anything I’d rather be close to. I rarely show my shelves to guests. I’m a bit embarassed about how much of my time and money I’ve put into reading and writing and owning books and don’t care to show them off. In fact, my mentor, Richard Hugo told me once that if I loved a book I should never loan it and always keep it close. However, what I really want to point out is that the stuff to show off is really between the shelves and in the white space of the pages. Any reader knows that. However, only great readers have shelves that consistently speak back to them!
Will Hochman, at 10:10 am EST on February 27, 2008
Other Joys of Collecting Books
Oh, yes, there are many reasons for displaying, collecting, or simply owning books. To wit (in no particular order):
- books add color to the decor of most rooms - their purchase supports worthy authors, whom some of us long to join in real or imagined companionship - book cases provide insulation from drafy walls and serve well as room partitions - books stand as a protest against over-reliance on Google and Wikipedia - books bring out the latent librarian in some of us - books on diverse subjects nourish unplanned intellectual excursions - book “collections” sustain lifelong intellectual quests — even when not all are read — and in some instances find permanent homes in institutional libraries - books signal to children the importance of reading and writing - quality books are an investment, a usable asset waiting one day to be cashed out on Ebay - abiding satisfaction comes to those who “rescue” books from individuals who would abandon them or trash them - book collections, especially if large, are a reminder that moving from home to home is a weighty decision- books are the better alternative to a medicine cabinet full of drugs — in a moment of need find one to assist sleep, nourish hope, escape burdens, seek adventure, or enjoy the fruits of another’s creativity.
In case you are wondering, my wife and I are the proud owners of 5,000+ volumes. We would not have it any other way!
Dick Yanikoski, at 10:10 am EST on February 27, 2008
My Name Is Frizbane And I’m A Book-aholic
Three things ...
First, I own waaay more books than makes sense, but they almost all reside on both stand-alone and built-in bookshelves that I constructed myself. The shelves are deep and, in some locations, I have run out of space to put new shelves. I have, therefore, taken to pushing rows of books to the back of the shelves and stacking new books in front of them. This practice just drives some of my book-loving friends crazy. When I ask why, they always answer in terms of what MY behavior should be ... not theirs.
Second, I only purchase paperback books when it is absolutely necessary. There is something about a paperback that I find distasteful. To me they are pretenders to books ... pseudo tomes. And by the way, one of the best things to happen to those of us who take some care in purchasing books is the presence of on-line used-book shops. I have purchased hundreds (probably thousands) of used books on-line have been disappointed very, very infrequently.
Third, having extensive professional and personal libraries, and I have both, is an illness. “Hello, my name is Frizbane, and I am a book-aholic.”
The number of books I own that I intend to read more than once is a tiny fraction of my holdings (“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” “Don Quixote,” poetry, cookbooks, lots of children’s books (usually read to children), professional stuff, “The Origin of the Species,” the usual stuff). Yet there they sit. Many books I intend to read – and own — could be checked out of the several public and academic libraries to which I have access. Reading a book and then shelving it – and I do “lend out” a great many books to friends who either feign interest in reading something I have recommended or genuinely intend to read something I lend them but never get around to it – is so impractical and inefficient it is ridiculous. This winter, a close friend returned one of my “treasures” after it sat in a stack of books next to her nightstand for more than twenty years ... unread. Before reshelving it I gently fondled it, I imagine the way a pot-head fondles and tests the aroma of a joint before lighting up.
I will die within the next twenty years and my son will have the very distasteful task of sorting through my thousands of books and (1) deciding what small proportion he wants for himself, his family, and friends, (2) separating out those he does not want that can be sold to used-book dealers, and (3) sending the rest on to whatever local charity has an annual book sale. He did promise me just this month that he would write a program that would produce a quite spectacular database of my holdings if I would spend the next year or so recording each and every ISBN ... so you can see he’s already worrying about it. I think I’ll hold out for a barcode reader so I can improve my efficiency by reading the ISBN from the barcode. But what about my pre-1966 tomes? Life is soooo complicated.
I am well aware of – and am in complete denial about – my book-aholism. I’m certain my son and his wife have discussed subjecting me to an intervention. Thank god they have decided that hiring an arsonist or renting a front-loader for a long weekend are less hassle, less expensive, and less painful than forcing me to own up to my illness.
Frizbane Manley, at 10:25 am EST on February 27, 2008
book and socket wrenches
Students invariably ask, on the first visit to my office, “Have you read all these books?"My answer is that I have read all of some of them and some of all of them. I suggest that they think of the bookshelves as the tool board in an auto menchanic’s bay. Hanging there are tools s/he uses every day, tools s/he needs for the occasional Mercedes tuneup, and tools s/he once used to adjust the timing on a ‘76 Honda but now has no idea how they function. My job as a professor is to know what’s in the books and how and when to use them, all of them or parts of them. Socket wrenches du jour.
jon-christian suggs, at 10:45 am EST on February 27, 2008
Here’s a radical idea that puts me squarely in the nerd camp: I borrow books from the library and read them. If they pass the audition, then I buy them for my bookshelf.
Reluctant Librarian, at 11:00 am EST on February 27, 2008
There is a lovely little book by Tom Raabe (?) called _Biblioholism_ that discusses the topic at length. One of my favorites has to do with owning a book BEFORE the movie was made.
booklover, at 11:10 am EST on February 27, 2008
On the Topic of Books and Self
“A room without books is as a body without a soul.” Ovid. Truer words were never spoken.
There is no room in my house, including the three bath rooms, that doesn’t contain books. I even keep books in the car to read at lunch or while waiting for an appointment. As a child, I’d read the cereal boxes to amuse myself. There are books I’ve carried with me everywhere, including to a stint as a summer camp counselor (how would I have survived without the Ballentine boxed set of “The Lord of the Rings?")
Some books are old friends, to be read and reread. Others are there as reference—if I get interested in a topic, I’ve got to read about it. I collect cookbooks, hoping one day to exceed the collection that Phyllis Richman used to have at the Washington Post (and yes, Andy Rooney, I do read them when I go to bed.) That’s beyond my collection of law books and books on photography, the subject I teach. As a writer, my husband is constantly bring reference material home and our garage is filled with about half a million comic books of which several thousand are ones he wrote.
We have long since run out of shelf space or wall space for any more shelves. The three stacks of “must get to” books next to my husband’s bed are almost as tall as I am (I fear the next big earthquake.)
This is all to say that if there is any such thing as book display etiquette, I’ve never heard of it. I feel very uncomfortable in a home which does not have books on display. Harlan Ellison, whose collection of books exceeds ours (he builds additions to his house when he starts running out of shelf space), has been known to respond to the question “have you read all these books?” by saying “Of course not. Who wants a house full of books you’ve already read?”
Christine Valada, at 11:50 am EST on February 27, 2008
The books that got away
Books represent the overriding point of conflict in my marriage. My wife constantly urges me to get rid of books. As a result, I have not read many of the books on my shelves on display simply because I had to give away many of the books I have read. Recently, we moved, and I must have given away 100-200 books. Since then, I seem to have accumulated more, which I want to get around to reading. Invariably, I end up reading the books I took out of the library first, because, after all, they have to GO BACK at a certain time, thus giving me a deadline. So for me the bookshelves in my house are a combination of the asperational (yes, I’m going finish Stephenson’s Baroque trilogy THIS YEAR, I promise, really) and the books so beloved that I could not part with them (also books by people I went to college with or are autographed).
Richard LeComte, at 1:15 pm EST on February 27, 2008
As a relatively transient 30-year-old, every move to a new apartment is torture because it means I sort through my books. The resistance and subsequent pain of weeding them is located somewhere between pulling teeth and giving up a firstborn. I give them away to properly appreciative friends and the rest to the local library. And then I have to move the remaining books and shelves, requiring a strong back and even stronger friendships. My joy is restored once the books are back on their shelves and I am reminded of which I still need to read. One would think I would only hold onto the books I love best if I move every 18 months. Yet I own books I’ve moved four or five times but have never read. I have hope, optimism for that future life in which I can read these books that once caught my eye and still hold my interest. But until then, I’ll keep moving them.
Kim Bryant, at 1:30 pm EST on February 27, 2008
I found the piece and the comments so far interesting, but bewildering. My bookshelves are full of books I haven’t read but which I think I might like to read some time in the future when they are out of print and not readily available in a convenient library.
Having read a book I see little point in keeping it except those rare books that I might want to consult or those even rarer ones I might re-read.
Gavin Moodie, Principal Policy Adviser at Griffith University, Australia, at 3:50 pm EST on February 27, 2008
I’m with the Reluctant Librarian here — the vast majority of books that pass through my life spend at most a month or two with me before returning to their shelves of my local university or public library. My personal collection probably amounts to less than 200, split roughly between the useful but hard to find and the relentlessly consulted.
I have arrived at this equilibrium through the agnony and expense of moving regularly, plus an overwhelming preference for the atmosphere of libraries versus that of (most) bookstores. I think I love Powells in Portland because it reminds me so much of a library.
Historian, at 4:30 pm EST on February 27, 2008
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PrintBut fresh in my memory.
When Don's first son was born, he called me to tell me that had named him "James". I was flattered, so I asked him why they named him after me. Don said it was cause the baby was short and fat and smiled a lot!
Payback? Well, My ex-wife was named Lyn, and she and Don were not exactly friends. When I got an email from Don telling me his newest grandchild was named Kaylynn, I called him and asked him why the baby was named after my ex. When he finished sputtering, he said that Lynn was his middle name. I knew that - but gigging him was fun!
TBC
When Don's first son was born, he called me to tell me that had named him "James". I was flattered, so I asked him why they named him after me. Don said it was cause the baby was short and fat and smiled a lot!
Payback? Well, My ex-wife was named Lyn, and she and Don were not exactly friends. When I got an email from Don telling me his newest grandchild was named Kaylynn, I called him and asked him why the baby was named after my ex. When he finished sputtering, he said that Lynn was his middle name. I knew that - but gigging him was fun!
TBC
Tags: | Edit Tags Wednesday February 27, 2008 - 11:06am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Brief History of the Flathead Valley
By The Daily Inter Lake
1810 — Jasper Howse sent by the Hudson Bay Co. to establish a trading post. Some believe the post was at the north end of Flathead Lake, while others say the unsuccessful settlement was above Lake Pend d’Oreille in Idaho.
1812 — Canadian explorer David Thompson rides to a hill near Polson and describes Flathead Lake in his journal. His Indian companion notes that there is a gap through the mountains above the lake, but it isn’t used because of the Blackfeet Indians on the prairie side.
1846 — Fort Connah established by Canada’s Hudson Bay Co., north of present-day St. Ignatius. The Northwest is disputed territory at the time, with “Fifty-four forty or fight” Americans wanting the Oregon territory to take in British Columbia, while Canadians like Thompson
argue that present-day Washington, Oregon, Idaho and western Montana should remain in British hands.
1854 — St. Ignatius Mission established in the Mission Valley by Father DeSmet. With Indian agents corrupt or, in one case, crazy, the Catholic mission becomes the leading force on the reservation.
1854 — Capt. John Mullan and his party explore the Tobacco Plains near Eureka. The Indians once cultivated tobacco in the area, and near Spotted Bear on the South Fork.
1860 — Missoula County organized. At the time, it was part of Washington Territory. Montana Territory lies four years in the future.
1880 — “Honest John Dooley” builds a boat landing and store on the Flathead River near Kalispell.
1883 — Ashley Crossing founded on the southwest edge of present Kalispell. Some of its streets are part of the current city.
1885 — The U.S. Grant begins hauling freight and passengers on Flathead Lake. It is the first of many steamboats on the lake, running freight up from the Northern Pacific Railroad terminal at Ravalli.
1887 — Demersville is founded on the Flathead River, southeast of present-day Kalispell. It becomes a ghost town when the railroad reaches Kalispell. Named after store owner T.J. Demers, the town is pronounced “De-MARS-ville” by locals.
1887 — Two Kootenai Indians lynched by a mob at Demersville after being arrested for the killing of three prospectors near Libby. In 1890, four Kootenai Indians were hanged in Missoula for other murders. A company of “buffalo soldiers” is stationed in the Flathead to deal
with the uprising.
1891 — The Great Northern Railway arrives in the Flathead and businessman Charles Conrad establishes a town around the division point at Kalispell. But the route west, over the Marion hill, proves to be a tougher haul for locomotives than over the Continental Divide.
1892 — City of Kalispell incorporated.
1893 — Flathead County created out of Missoula County.
1899 — Flathead County High School opens. In the first graduating class is a young black woman, daughter of the janitor at Demersville School. He put all his kids through college.
1904 — The Great Northern moves its main line to Whitefish to take advantage of a lower route down the Kootenai River that eliminates 165 curves. Kalispell residents are angry about it for years, and one local historian writes a book entitled, “The Train Didn’t Stay Long.”
1903 — City of Whitefish incorporated. An early settler described the 160-acre townsite as “a heavily wooded, swampy marsh full of green frogs, lizards and other creepy things with trees so big and so thick that the sun could hardly shine through.” Stumps remain in Central Avenue, resulting in the early nickname “Stumptown.”
1909 — Lincoln County created out of Flathead County.
1909 — Columbia Falls incorporates, more than 20 years after it was founded. It had originally been selected as the division point for the Great Northern. But speculators with inside information demanded too much for the land, and angry Great Northern President Jim Hill turned his sights to Kalispell and then Whitefish.
1910 — Flathead Reservation opened for settlement. Kalispell is jammed with hopeful homesteaders. Indians are given 160-acre allotments, which they soon lose.
1910 — Glacier National Park created. Promoted heavily by the Great Northern, it becomes a mecca for rich tourists until World War II.
1923 — Lake County created out of Flathead County. A 36-square-mile section of the Flathead Reservation remains in Flathead County.
1929 — The Half Moon fire starts west of Columbia Falls and sweeps across the mountains into Glacier National Park. In just three days, it burned 103,000 acres in a 30-mile swath that cut across Teakettle and Columbia mountains, across the Flathead River, into the Canyon and on to Apgar. Denuded by the fire, the south-facing slopes of the Belton Hills become prime winter range, still used by elk.
1938 — Kerr Dam built at Polson. The concrete structure is 204 feet high and controls the top 10 feet of Flathead Lake. During World War II, there is a proposal to add 25 feet to the level, which would have flooded much of the valley below Kalispell.
1947 — Big Mountain is launched with a $100 stock offering in Whitefish. After some nip-and-tuck early years, it grows into a resort boasting 3,600 acres of skiable terrain and 10 lifts. That same year, D.C. Dunham builds a lumber mill in Columbia Falls and names his company after a creek back in Bemidji, Minn. Plum Creek Timber Co. now owns millions of acres of timberland in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Louisiana and Arkansas.
1953 — Hungry Horse Dam completed. At 564 feet high, it is still the United States’ 11th-tallest dam. The Columbia Falls aluminum plant is soon built, consuming about three times the dam’s annual output of electricity.
1964 — A major flood hits the Montana Rockies, wiping out the highway and rail lines across Marias Pass. In Glacier National Park, McDonald Creek runs upstream. The Flathead River laps at the edge of the highway across from the airport and invades Evergreen.
1967 — Grizzlies kill two campers, miles apart, in a single night at Glacier National Park. They are the first fatal attacks since the park’s founding. The incidents are chronicled in the book, “Night of the Grizzlies.”
1979 — Californian Ray Thompson moves his Semitool company to Montana and sets up business in the old Bell Camper factory south of Kalispell. Later moved to West Reserve Drive, Semitool produces the processing tools and cleaning systems used in computer chip fabrication. The business is still thriving and employs 800 people.
1988 — Forest fires sweep the West, including the 37,500-acre Red Bench Fire on Glacier National Park’s west edge.
1997 — On the heels of the wettest year in Flathead Valley history and fueled by near-record snowpacks, the Stillwater and Swan rivers experience 100-year floods. Hayfields turn into ponds, rising groundwater covers Montana 35 near Woods Bay and closes West Valley Drive. The Stillwater River floods parts of Evergreen and the Causeway road on Echo Lake is submerged.
1998 — Blacktail Mountain Ski Area opens near Lakeside.
2001 — The Moose Fire burns for two months across 71,000 acres of Flathead National Forest and Glacier National Park.
2003 — In a historic fire year, 310,000 acres of forest burn in a series of fires stretching from the Bob Marshall Wilderness to the Canadian border.
2004 — Flathead County passes Cascade County to become the third-largest county in Montana. The population growth — almost 10 percent since 2000 — fuels record subdivision activity, real estate sales and commercial development.
2005 — Population growth, investment buying and limited supply combined to drive sales to unprecedented heights in the Northwest Montana real estate market: More than a billion dollars in commercial and residential property changed hands, up 25 percent from 2004.
(This story originally appeared in Flathead Facts, an annual publication of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. C. 2006, Daily Inter Lake, all rights reserved.
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Since my chrono-sense is nonexistant, let's pop up to another pivotal year. 1964.
I had my first car. The folks finally let me get a driver's license and then a vehicle in the fall of 1963, a two-door Ford Falcon sedan, green with a bronze interior, six cylinder, three-on-the-tree transmission.
I graduated high school in 1964. No honors, but I was done, and the last act was crossing the platform in the gym and getting my diploma and a handshake from Francis O'Connell, Larry's uncle, usually known as Fanny.
We took my car over the '64 Christmas break and went to the Ice-capades in Spokane & visited some of Dad's relatives there. It was my first real highway driving experience and I only messed up a couple of times. No dents, no tickets, just a couple of clenched sphincters and some lessons to remember - like, don't pass on blind corners!
Dad took me on a father/son trip for a couple of days and we visited Lewis & Clark caverns. It was fun, but it was good to get back home again.
I had my first car accident - I was heading north up Main and a guy going south turned in front of me at Main & First. He got the ticket, but I was probably going over the speed limit.
The Flood of '64 happened - the biggest event of the year. It was, if you will pardon the pun, a "watershed" moment in more ways than one.
To quote: "IN THE SECOND WEEK OF JUNE 1964, the worst natural disaster in Montana's recorded history descended on the state in the form of heavy rains that quickly turned once picturesque creeks into raging, mile-wide rivers. Dams, roads, and railroads washed out, homes and ranches were swept away, and thirty people died. The area affected by the flooding amounted to nearly thirty thousand square miles, or roughly 20 percent of the state. By Thursday, June 11, President Lyndon Johnson had declared nine counties in northwest and north-central Montana a federal disaster area. When mopping-up operations ended, damages stood at an estimated at $62 million."
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For a full report, see http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3951/is_200407/ai_n9452436
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More : "Although it wasn't the perfect storm, Parret said that the combination of weather, a phenomenon known as âœorographic lifting, and other factors led to a storm that occurs only once every five thousand years.Many areas were hard hit, but among the worst were a band from roughly Kalispell to Great Falls.
Between June 7 and 8, Browning received more than eight inches of rain, 10 inches in Glacier National Park, 13 inches southwest of Augusta, and 11 inches at Heart Butte.In effect, nearly an average year's worth of precipitation fell in a 24-hour period. What was worse was that heavy snow pack also melted and greatly added to runoff."
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The first thing I remember was an early stage of the flood, when Dad & Vic & I loaded our boat & motor into the pickup and headed for Vic's brother's house on the west bank of the Stillwater below Conrad Cemetery. We launched the boat at the intersection of Willow Glen and Conrad Drive. Dad stayed with the truck, Vic & I started hauling Hans and Eda's stuff out, the smaller valuable things likes papers and guns. Every trip we had to go farther, Dad had to keep moving the pickup because of the rising water. The last trip we had to go almost to the foot of the hill in Woodland park.
(For an idea of the water level, I worked as a watchman at the Kmart building when it was built in the early 70's, and the engineer told me that he planned the floor of the store to be three inches above the 1964 flood level.)
Memory number two was Paul & Mom & I taking his boat for a ride. We put in there below the barn and went up past Foy's bend. Bits and chunks of road and fields stuck out of the water, but we had no trouble running the boat on or parallel to the road.
I took a lot of slides with a Mercury 35mm split-frame camera but when I had them developed, Guest's Photo Art conveniently lost them. I had recorded the water levels on a lot of the farm homes and buildings.
Memory three - the water backed up in Ashley creek and it overflowed the banks in several places. The draw north of our house and much of the field flooded, with water getting as close to the house as the ditch by the driveway. The same thing happened at Streits, with the water flowing over the bank into the pothole south of the house, filling the west end of the draw in the Handcock place and finally spilling over and washing out the dike in the middle of that draw and flooding the east end of the draw. This water overflowed the road and flooded the bottom of the old Potato cellar on Darel's and drowned all of their young pigs - Dad & Darel were using it as a farrowing house for the sows who were about to give birth or who had just given birth.
This was the biggest result of the flood in my life - they could not make their mortgage payment afterward and the bank foreclosed on that operation. The good part of this was that Dad, after he got over it a bit, was much more relaxed and somewhat easier to get along with. The partnership with Darel was not all smooth sailing. Maybe more on this later.
Memory 4 - Dad, Mom & I were out on the slough in the boat at the height of the flood when we heard someone yelling for help. Some young guys were drifitng down the river in a boat with a dead motor. There was a little chunk of dry land near where Benny Louden's house now sits, so I dropped Mom & Dad off there and went out into the river, got a rope from their boat to ours and towed them ashore at Louden's, then went back and got Mom & Dad. I remember rafts of foam riding like soapsuds (and maybe they were!) on the crest of the river and the mud colored water was like what I saw later on in Vietnam.
No older houses out in the valley got wet - the folks that built them recognized the possibility of flooding and usually built on the highest part of the land. Most, but not all, of the farmers didn't evacuate but stayed with their homes.
The flood made a lot of changes. Fishing in the slough was never the same and the grouse in the riverbank thickets disappeared. Most of the old cars and trucks that hed been dumped over the river bank up on Dutch Hettinger's (now Seabaugh's) were washed up into the fields, there was wood and other debris in all the flooded fields.
A lot of water stayed behind when the flood receded - it took a long time for the puddles to evaporate or soak into the already saturated ground. Parts of the road into town were like dikes, with water on both sides in the fields.
There was a sizable pond left in our field next to Vic's lane, and I was riding on the back of the tractor - feet on the hitch bar, hands on the hydraulic lines - while Dad was driving. Being very much a kid, I had picked up a rock and when we went by the pond I threw it in. I didn't think anything more about it till Dad started telling folks there were fish in the pond - he saw one jump as we went by on the tractor! Did I ever 'fess up about the rock? Nope!
Donal Grant was living on the west side of what is now Demersville road just north of the bridge, and ended up with four or five feet of water in his house. He hired me to help him shovel mud and rebuild the foundation under the house. Somewhere I have a pic of Mom posing with her finger pointing to the water line on Donal's picture window.
Speaking of tractors - here are a couple of flashbacks! A passenger on a tractor usually rode standing on the back like I described above. Dad & I were headed home for lunch from the hayfield at Darel's, and I planned on beating him into the house so I waited till he cut the throttle right in front for the turn into the driveway and then stepped off the hitch backwards. I didn't count on how fast we were going - I somersaulted merrily a couple of times and got a nice road rash. He beat me into the house, shaking his head at me.
Once I was told to take the tractor home after haying ended at Buck Weaver's for the day, and being dumb and impatient I was going much too fast. The tractor had an open metal box welded on behind the seat for fast access to tools, and I hit a frost bump in the road hard enough to put all four wheels in the air and bounce most of the tools out of the box. After the tractor & I got done bouncing and I had the tools picked up and put away, I was in NO hurry to go on home - I just poked along!
Tractors. I was talking to Vic, who was sitting on his tractor taking a break with the engine idling. I decided it would be funny to pull off a spark plug wire and see what he did. Advice! NEVER grab a plug wire where it is attached to the plug! Vic laughed for a long time about the way I jumped and screamed when I got the full benefit of the spark output.
More rambles later.
TBC
I had my first car. The folks finally let me get a driver's license and then a vehicle in the fall of 1963, a two-door Ford Falcon sedan, green with a bronze interior, six cylinder, three-on-the-tree transmission.
I graduated high school in 1964. No honors, but I was done, and the last act was crossing the platform in the gym and getting my diploma and a handshake from Francis O'Connell, Larry's uncle, usually known as Fanny.
We took my car over the '64 Christmas break and went to the Ice-capades in Spokane & visited some of Dad's relatives there. It was my first real highway driving experience and I only messed up a couple of times. No dents, no tickets, just a couple of clenched sphincters and some lessons to remember - like, don't pass on blind corners!
Dad took me on a father/son trip for a couple of days and we visited Lewis & Clark caverns. It was fun, but it was good to get back home again.
I had my first car accident - I was heading north up Main and a guy going south turned in front of me at Main & First. He got the ticket, but I was probably going over the speed limit.
The Flood of '64 happened - the biggest event of the year. It was, if you will pardon the pun, a "watershed" moment in more ways than one.
To quote: "IN THE SECOND WEEK OF JUNE 1964, the worst natural disaster in Montana's recorded history descended on the state in the form of heavy rains that quickly turned once picturesque creeks into raging, mile-wide rivers. Dams, roads, and railroads washed out, homes and ranches were swept away, and thirty people died. The area affected by the flooding amounted to nearly thirty thousand square miles, or roughly 20 percent of the state. By Thursday, June 11, President Lyndon Johnson had declared nine counties in northwest and north-central Montana a federal disaster area. When mopping-up operations ended, damages stood at an estimated at $62 million."
---
For a full report, see http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3951/is_200407/ai_n9452436
---
More : "Although it wasn't the perfect storm, Parret said that the combination of weather, a phenomenon known as âœorographic lifting, and other factors led to a storm that occurs only once every five thousand years.Many areas were hard hit, but among the worst were a band from roughly Kalispell to Great Falls.
Between June 7 and 8, Browning received more than eight inches of rain, 10 inches in Glacier National Park, 13 inches southwest of Augusta, and 11 inches at Heart Butte.In effect, nearly an average year's worth of precipitation fell in a 24-hour period. What was worse was that heavy snow pack also melted and greatly added to runoff."
----
The first thing I remember was an early stage of the flood, when Dad & Vic & I loaded our boat & motor into the pickup and headed for Vic's brother's house on the west bank of the Stillwater below Conrad Cemetery. We launched the boat at the intersection of Willow Glen and Conrad Drive. Dad stayed with the truck, Vic & I started hauling Hans and Eda's stuff out, the smaller valuable things likes papers and guns. Every trip we had to go farther, Dad had to keep moving the pickup because of the rising water. The last trip we had to go almost to the foot of the hill in Woodland park.
(For an idea of the water level, I worked as a watchman at the Kmart building when it was built in the early 70's, and the engineer told me that he planned the floor of the store to be three inches above the 1964 flood level.)
Memory number two was Paul & Mom & I taking his boat for a ride. We put in there below the barn and went up past Foy's bend. Bits and chunks of road and fields stuck out of the water, but we had no trouble running the boat on or parallel to the road.
I took a lot of slides with a Mercury 35mm split-frame camera but when I had them developed, Guest's Photo Art conveniently lost them. I had recorded the water levels on a lot of the farm homes and buildings.
Memory three - the water backed up in Ashley creek and it overflowed the banks in several places. The draw north of our house and much of the field flooded, with water getting as close to the house as the ditch by the driveway. The same thing happened at Streits, with the water flowing over the bank into the pothole south of the house, filling the west end of the draw in the Handcock place and finally spilling over and washing out the dike in the middle of that draw and flooding the east end of the draw. This water overflowed the road and flooded the bottom of the old Potato cellar on Darel's and drowned all of their young pigs - Dad & Darel were using it as a farrowing house for the sows who were about to give birth or who had just given birth.
This was the biggest result of the flood in my life - they could not make their mortgage payment afterward and the bank foreclosed on that operation. The good part of this was that Dad, after he got over it a bit, was much more relaxed and somewhat easier to get along with. The partnership with Darel was not all smooth sailing. Maybe more on this later.
Memory 4 - Dad, Mom & I were out on the slough in the boat at the height of the flood when we heard someone yelling for help. Some young guys were drifitng down the river in a boat with a dead motor. There was a little chunk of dry land near where Benny Louden's house now sits, so I dropped Mom & Dad off there and went out into the river, got a rope from their boat to ours and towed them ashore at Louden's, then went back and got Mom & Dad. I remember rafts of foam riding like soapsuds (and maybe they were!) on the crest of the river and the mud colored water was like what I saw later on in Vietnam.
No older houses out in the valley got wet - the folks that built them recognized the possibility of flooding and usually built on the highest part of the land. Most, but not all, of the farmers didn't evacuate but stayed with their homes.
The flood made a lot of changes. Fishing in the slough was never the same and the grouse in the riverbank thickets disappeared. Most of the old cars and trucks that hed been dumped over the river bank up on Dutch Hettinger's (now Seabaugh's) were washed up into the fields, there was wood and other debris in all the flooded fields.
A lot of water stayed behind when the flood receded - it took a long time for the puddles to evaporate or soak into the already saturated ground. Parts of the road into town were like dikes, with water on both sides in the fields.
There was a sizable pond left in our field next to Vic's lane, and I was riding on the back of the tractor - feet on the hitch bar, hands on the hydraulic lines - while Dad was driving. Being very much a kid, I had picked up a rock and when we went by the pond I threw it in. I didn't think anything more about it till Dad started telling folks there were fish in the pond - he saw one jump as we went by on the tractor! Did I ever 'fess up about the rock? Nope!
Donal Grant was living on the west side of what is now Demersville road just north of the bridge, and ended up with four or five feet of water in his house. He hired me to help him shovel mud and rebuild the foundation under the house. Somewhere I have a pic of Mom posing with her finger pointing to the water line on Donal's picture window.
Speaking of tractors - here are a couple of flashbacks! A passenger on a tractor usually rode standing on the back like I described above. Dad & I were headed home for lunch from the hayfield at Darel's, and I planned on beating him into the house so I waited till he cut the throttle right in front for the turn into the driveway and then stepped off the hitch backwards. I didn't count on how fast we were going - I somersaulted merrily a couple of times and got a nice road rash. He beat me into the house, shaking his head at me.
Once I was told to take the tractor home after haying ended at Buck Weaver's for the day, and being dumb and impatient I was going much too fast. The tractor had an open metal box welded on behind the seat for fast access to tools, and I hit a frost bump in the road hard enough to put all four wheels in the air and bounce most of the tools out of the box. After the tractor & I got done bouncing and I had the tools picked up and put away, I was in NO hurry to go on home - I just poked along!
Tractors. I was talking to Vic, who was sitting on his tractor taking a break with the engine idling. I decided it would be funny to pull off a spark plug wire and see what he did. Advice! NEVER grab a plug wire where it is attached to the plug! Vic laughed for a long time about the way I jumped and screamed when I got the full benefit of the spark output.
More rambles later.
TBC
Tags: | Edit Tags Tuesday February 26, 2008 - 07:53pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
- HOM: Quick Vic
- A very quick Vic story.
1. Vic hated magpies for many reasons, most of them dealing with their destructive habits and their uncaring mutilation of young or sick animals.
2. When Vic was in the ICU, after the unsuccessful cancer operation but before he died, he apparently lapsed into unconsciousness. The family was discussing his burial arrangements and was wondering what he would want, if anything, on his tombstone.
3. The heart monitor was furnishing its beep.........beep.........beep.........beep background to the conversation when a nephew said, tongue-in-cheek, that engraving a pair of magpies on his headstone might be a good idea. When he said that, the monitor switched to a beepbeepbeepbeepbeep rythmn. Vic may not have been responding verbally, but it was obvious he was listening!Tags: | Edit Tags Monday February 25, 2008 - 08:05pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Hits & Misses
- My marksmanship, like my memory, has alway been a hit-or-miss proposition.
I was a bird hunter before I was a deer hunter, and the very first time I hunted deer alone I did one of those memorably stupid things that have been a hallmark of my life.
I left Grandma's house and headed north along the creek one foggy morning and was walking through some waist-high grass and brush when a rooster pheasant took off right in front of me. Remember what I said about training taking over under stress? Just like I had done dozens of times before, I threw up the gun and shot the pheasant. In midair. In midflight. With a .30-30 rifle.
It was a great shot, the problem was that there wasn't a lot left of the bird and any deer that had been around were long gone. I got teased about that shot for a long time.
(Grandma had a little cat, nearly a kitten, that loved to hunt. One day there was a big ruckus in the middle of this same grass/brush patch, and she looked up in time to see an enormous pheasant struggle into a take off with the little cat hanging on to its rear end. When the cat turned loose and dropped off the pheasant went into overdrive getting out of there.)
I hunted alone one evening back on Weaver's island, and was sitting along one side of a pasture when a buck walked out of some trees on the other side. By this time I had done a lot long-range shooting with a .22 so once again training took over and messed me up. I held a foot or so over the buck's back to compensate for the bullet drop and touched off a shot. Unfortunately a .30-30 doesn't require as much hold-over as a .22 rimfire does - the bullet went exactly where I aimed and broke off a limb that landed on the buck's back. The last I saw of him was a white streak off in the timber.
I was a pretty good shot when the target was close up and I had to shoot fast, like at a grouse taking off in the thornapple thickets. It was when I had time to do more than just react and started thinking about ballistics that I would make most of my misses.
Other memorable shots? Standing on the bridge by Grandma's with my .22. I saw a duck coming down the creek about three feet off the water. It passed under the bridge and was headed on north when I made a best-guess calculation and shot at it. The duck was around 75-80 yards away when the bullet hit it and it went down. I suspect it died of surprise!
Jim Pierson & I took a trip up the North Fork drainage one summer and did a little plinking with my .22, a Weatherby XXII. Jim wanted to try it out, so he walked up the road about fifty yards and set up an empty plastic .22 ammo box, then walked back. When he got to me, he turned, brought the gun up, and fired before it was much above waist height. He hit the box dead center and shattered it!
I was totally impressed until he finished bringing the gun up, peered through the scope, and then muttered "Damn light trigger pull! First the gun goes off accidentally and now I can't even find the box in the scope!" When I got my laughter choked down to the point where I could tell him what happened, he didn't believe me until I showed him the broken box.
(Flashback - or forward - to college. Don Hoodenpyle & I went out into the desert to plink a bit and were setting up some junk to use as targets when a rabbit took off from under a piece of cardboard as he was picking it up. Don drew and fired and nailed the rabbit - and waited thirty years to confess to me that he had grabbed the revolver with one hand wrapped around the cylinder and the powder escaping for the barrel/cylinder gap branded his hand pretty thoroughly.)
Let me add another "Don" story to this - he always kept a pistol loaded with shot shells in his house for defense. One day his wife, Sandy, called him and asked him how to load the gun. He told her she didn't need to load it, it already was loaded. She said "Not anymore!"
They had been remodeling the house and Sandy had looked up in time to see a snake wriggle in through a hole and into the living room.She emptied the gun, got the snake - and the TV, and the table, and the wall, and...
Anyway, back to the North Fork! I made the second "miracle shot" of the day. We stopped at a little lake, and far down the other shore were some birds. I popped a shot at them which landed just past them and scared them winging down the lake towards us just above the water. I shot again and the bullet hist just behind them. They flared up, at around 150 yards, and I fired once more. Thud, the bullet hit one that was probably 50 feet up in the air, it pinwheeled down, dead. Jim turned to me and said "Don't you dare tell anyone about that shot - because I saw it and I STILL don't believe it!"
See? The luck runs both ways!
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Monday February 25, 2008 - 03:13pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Fact or Fiction?
- Let me insert the standard CYA disclaimer here - Any Similarity or Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead in This Blog is Purely Coincidental.
Read this for fun, not facts!Tags: | Edit Tags Monday February 25, 2008 - 12:06pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Family Deaths
- Aunt Minnie was my favorite aunt when i was growing up, always sweet and fun, but she'd had some hard times. Her husband committed suicide at home when he was in his late 30's.
Another death I remember was Uncle August Isch. I was staying at Grandma's. Rudy's son Dale was there too. We were in bed when the phone rang downstairs, so he slipped out of bed and eavesdropped through the vent over the stove. It was a call to tell the family that Granmda's brother August had drowned while fishing at McWinegar slough, apparently when he tipped or fell out of a rubber raft. I think August was a WWI vet, though he never talked about it at all. Traditiopn says one of my uncles set off a friecracker in the house and August dove headfirst under a table.Tags: | Edit Tags Monday February 25, 2008 - 10:53am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Vic
- I haven't mentioned Vic much yet. Vic Bjornrud was more of a friend than a father figure, though his daughter & I were born on the same day.
I knew Vic when I was little - he & Mom were good friends, and his older brothers were good friends of Ian's - but I really didn't get acquainted with him till I was in high school. He owned property up near Columbia Falls as well as his old family farm that adjoins ours to the northwest, and lived on the CF property, but in the early 60's his house caught fire. He and his family moved into Grampa Handcock's old house for a few years after that happened.
Vic was Mom's age, but a kid at heart who loved hunting and fishing and laughter, and we got to be good friends.
I could write another book just about him, but I will try to cover the highlights here.
Vic had two older brothers, and during prohibition the family ran a still and sold the whiskey in town. The way it usually worked, or at least Vic thought so, was that he ended up tending the still and doing all the work while brothers Hans & Roy delivered the alcohol, collected the money, and then spent it partying.
When the whiskey was aging in the barrels, they kept a can of a tarry medication handy, so if the feds showed up they could pour it into the whiskey and claim it was just sheep dip.
There was a false alarm that ended their operation, though. Vic's dad was home, and was tipped off that the feds were on their way out, so he contaminated the barrels, took the still apart, and buried the pieces out in the field. The excitement made him have a stroke which rendered him incapable of telling or showing where the still was buried, so it is still out there somewhere. Vic searched for it off and on for years with no luck.
Vic loved wildlife. loved to watch the animals and birds. In his younger days he hunted for survival, so there was no real thrill for him in most hunting, it was just like grocery shopping, but more interesting.
The exception was geese! The honkers could make his hands shake and he loved hunting them. I spent a lot of hours in blinds with him waiting while he coaxed the geese in.
Vic was an exceptional shot, the result of great eye/hand coordination and extended practice as a youngster who fired hundreds of rounds a week at game and targets. I rarely saw him miss, and when he did miss it was usually a goose.
He missed once that wasn't his fault, though. He had his old lab, Sheba, in the pit with him and when the geese finally came in she was as excited as he was. When he stood up to shoot she jumped up too - and slammed her nose into his groin! I was shooting, but out of the corner of my eye I saw the barrels of the ten gauge he was using suddenly jerk straight up and swing wildly as they went off.
Pheasant shooting was an example of Vic's normal shooting ability. He would take hid old Winchester model 06 .22 and ride the combine during harvest. When a rooster would flush he would shoot it down in mid-flight, using the .22 as effectively as most folks used a shotgun.
He & I went into a store together to get shotgun shells. I went through the checkout first and bought ten boxes. Vic bought one box, and explained to the clerk it was all he needed because he was ten times as good a shot as I was. It was hilarious, but true. I remember hunting with him when we flushed a big rooster. I missed it three times, then Vic casually brought up his gun, fired once, and nailed it dead. And grinned.
Every deer and elk I saw him shoot was shot in the head so no meat would be wasted. He never missed.
We were shooting at a target with a scope sighted rifle of mine. I shot at the bullseye, Vic shot at the flies that landed on the target - and hit them.
He told me I was a competent shot, but not a great shot. Later on I will tell of a few of my luckier shots, to compensate for the misses I have written about.
I made one great shot with him. I had just gotten a Remington in the then-new .22-250 caliber. Vic was working back along the creek so I took it back and showed it to him. He decided to try it and popped off an offhand shot at a merganser way up the creek. The gun shot flatter than he was used to so he shot a little over it and scared it into the air towards us, so Vic handed me the rifle and said "Shoot it!". When the merganser went by us about 5 feet in the air and about 50 yards away, I swung and fired. All I could see in the scope was a red blur - the high velocity bullet literally exploded the duck when it hit. Vic laughed till the tears ran over that.
More Vic later - this is enough for today.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Sunday February 24, 2008 - 08:37pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Streit Flashbacks
- Grandma Streit's house had a big old Ashley wood stove in the living room. It loaded from the top and had a little vent lid at the bottom front for lighting and controlling the draft. It would glow red and put out tons of heat, and there was a grill above the stove to let the heat into the upstairs bedrooms.
In one of my klutzy moments as a little kid, I managed to fall and lay my forearm aginst the hot stove, resulting in vaseline and bandages and tears.
In later years, she had an oil furnace in the basement and I was safer.
The basement (cellar?) also contained the cream separator, and here is a bit about it: "The DeLaval Separator Company, which was established in the USA in 1885, was one of Alfa Laval’s first global sales companies. The company, founded in Sweden in 1883, was based on the invention of the first continuously operating cream separator by Gustav de Laval. This mechanical cream skimmer eliminated the tedious task of hand skimming milk for farmers, and business boomed in the USA where it was popular with farmers in New York State and New England."
I watched Bill clean the plates in that old separator many times, and to my surprise found myself doing the same job for the USN. To quote once again: "A shortage of lubricating oil during World War II stimulated the development of the oil separator and led to the development of Alfa Laval’s industrial separators. The DeLaval Separator Company was an important supplier to the U.S. Navy. Still today, Alfa Laval is a well-known name in the marine industry."
Yup - the diesel engines used the same setup by the same company!
They processed their eggs in that cellar too, just like Mom did.
When I was quite little, they added on to the house and put in indoor plumbing. One of my more embarrassing moments as a little kid was using that bathroom. I was getting rid of a lot of excess fluid into the toilet when Grandma heard me, walked in, said "Turn that water off when you get done. OH! Well, never mind!" Didn't bother her, bothered me, makes me smile now.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Sunday February 24, 2008 - 09:50am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Entry for February 24, 2008
- Tags: | Edit Tags Sunday February 24, 2008 - 09:28am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
- HOM: Ashley Creek
- On another hunt, Paul and I walked up the west bank of Ashley creek through the neighboring farms, and stopped and took a break near a wide spot in the creek. I walked up and looked over the bank and a big flock of mallards that had been huddled against the bank took off. I emptied my shotgun at them and the three shots bagged my full limit of ducks and a lot of Paul's.
Another time we hunted down the creek late in the season, walking on the ice. I was pretty nervous about breaking through the ice, but Paul just told me to walk in his tracks and I'd be okay. Trouble was, I outweighed Paul by 30 pounds. CRACK! SPLASH!
Luckily only one leg went through and I dropped sideways on to thicker ice. Paul thought that was pretty funny, and thought it was even funnier when I kept following him down the creek - crawling on my belly on the ice.
(Flashback: when I was little, a man named Dewey Damon lost control of his pickup on the icy road. It slid, hit the bridge rail, flipped over and landed upside down on the ice in the creek with the cab submerged. He drowned trying to get to open water.
I had to stay at Grandma's with Mom while the men worked to recover his body, and I remember Mom being angry because some of the neighbor kids were skating on the ice while the men worked. She thought it was dangerous and disrespectful. This episode gave me great respect for ice and its dangers!)
Another Ashley Creek memory - Gordon and I and his brother-in-law Joe hunted along the bank behind Ballengers. Joe walked out on a log sticking out into the creek, and was balancing nicely on it when a duck took off. He fired, missed the duck, fell in.
Another memory. It was opening day of duck season and Paul hadn't purchased his own shotgun yet and was using my old single-shot .410. I noticed that when he shot the little gun seemed to kick awfully hard but I reallized why it looked that way when Paul, in a hurry, didn't close the gun completely before he fired. His shoulder jerked back and the muzzle flipped up, but all the gun did was go "C LICK". That's when Paul realized he was flinching, and was one of those episodes I.thought was funny and he didn't.
(Side note: I bought the little .410 as a gift for Dad, but I used it far more than he did. In later years he bought a Thompson/Center .410 pistol to carry on the tractor and used it for pest control.)
I think that when I was growing up Ashley Creek was my favorite spot on earth. I still love the creek, but the farms have changed, the people have changed, and life itself has changed, so the magic I knew there is gone.Tags: | Edit Tags Saturday February 23, 2008 - 08:53pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Coming Soon!
- Hardcover
7th Heaven by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
The Age of Shiva by Manil Suri
And Sometimes Why by Rebecca Johnson
Becoming Holyfield: A Fighter's Journey by Evander Holyfield with Lee Gruenfeld
Before Green Gables: The Prequel to Anne of Green Gables by Budge Wilson
Betrayal by John Lescroart
The Black Dove: A Holmes on the Range Mystery by Steve Hockensmith
Black Olives by Martha Tod Dudman
Burn Zone by James O. Born
Cadillac Orpheus by Solon Timothy Woodward
Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock
The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation by Philip Shenon
Dakota by Martha Grimes
Death of a Gentle Lady: A Hamish Macbeth Mystery by M.C. Beaton
Deep Dish by Mary Kay Andrews
The Eye of Jade: A Mei Weng Mystery by Diane Wei Liang
Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
The First Patient by Michael Palmer
Friend of the Devil by Peter Robinson
Gardens of Water by Alan Drew
The Ghost War by Alex Berenson
A Grave in Gaza: An Omar Yussef Mystery by Matt Beynon Rees
His Illegal Self by Peter Carey
Hope's Boy by Andrew Bridge
Ice Trap by Kitty Sewell
An Incomplete Revenge: A Maisie Dobbs Novel by Jacqueline Winspear
The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt
The Invisible by Andrew Britton
John by Niall Williams
The Konkans by Tony D'Souza
L.A. Outlaws by T. Jefferson Parker
The Labrador Pact by Matt Haig
Lady Killer by Lisa Scottoline
Lady Macbeth by Susan Fraser King
Leading Lady by Heywood Gould
Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America by Allen C. Guelzo
Manic: A Memoir by Terri Cheney
Memory by Philippe Grimbert
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
My Liar by Rachel Cline
The Night Following by Morag Joss
Notorious by Michele Martinez
Obedience by Will Lavender
The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella
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Song Yet Sung by James McBride
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Split Estate by Charlotte Bacon
Stalked by Brian Freeman
Standing Still by Kelly Simmons
Stranger in Paradise: A Jesse Stone Novel by Robert B. Parker
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Taking the Hill: From Philly to Baghdad to the United States Congress by Patrick J. Murphy with Adam Frankel
The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead by David Shields
Unknown Means by Elizabeth Becka
What Never Happens by Anne Holt
Where the Heart Leads: From the Casebook of Barnaby Adair by Stephanie Laurens
Why Women Should Rule the World: A Memoir by Dee Dee Myers
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Compulsion: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman
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Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz
Dead Time by Stephen White
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Death Walked In: A Death on Demand Mystery by Carolyn Hart
Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell
Fall of Frost by Brian Hall
Falling into Manholes: The Memoir of a Bad/Good Girl by Wendy Merrill
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From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island by Lorna Goodison
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The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson
The Importance of Being Kennedy by Laurie Graham
Killer Heat by Linda Fairstein
Lush Life by Richard Price
The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace by Aaron David Miller
Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories by Elizabeth Strout
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Panama Fever: The Epic Story of One of the Greatest Human Achievements of All Time: The Building of the Panama Canal by Matthew Parker
A Prisoner of Birth by Jeffrey Archer
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Salvage by Jane F. Kotapish
Seen It All and Done the Rest by Pearl Cleage
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Submarine by Joe Dunthorne
Three Girls and Their Brother by Theresa Rebeck
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Where Are You Now by Mary Higgins Clark
The Woman Who Wouldn’t by Gene Wilder
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The Finder by Colin Harrison
The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber
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Home: A Memoir of My Early Years by Julie Andrews and Cokie Roberts
The House at Riverton by Kate Morton
I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story by Michael Hastings
Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation by Cokie Roberts
Lambrusco by Ellen Cooney
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Machine by Peter Adolphsen
Madness: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher
The Miracle at Speedy Motors: The New Novel in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series by Alexander McCall Smith
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The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal by Lily Koppel
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Searching for Paradise in Parker, PA by Kris Radish
Shadow of Power: A Paul Madriani Novel by Steve Martini
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Split: A Memoir of Divorce by Suzanne FinnamoreTags: | Edit Tags Saturday February 23, 2008 - 02:13pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Pigeons
- The bane of a farmer's existence.
Pigeons love old barns and graneries for the food and shelter they offer. Farmers hate pigeons because of the mess they leave behind. Think of the bottom of a parrot's cage, but 50 feet long and 30 feet wide and six inches deep in the middle with droppings. In the course of a year a lot of hay or grain would be contaminated and wasted, so some of the neighbors encouraged me to keep the pigeon populations down.
At Grandma's, Bill would supply me with .22 ammo and the use of his Winchester model 72 with the Weaver B6 scope to shoot pigeons and then Grandma would have me gather up the ones I harvested so she could cook them.
There were a line of outbuildings that formed part of the barnyard on the south side, and I used to hide in them and wait for a shot.
(As an aside, one of those old buildings was a shop, and in it there was an old manual drill press I would love to own today. I have never seen one like it again.)
Jimmy & Buck Weaver never furnished me anything but access, but I was always welcome at their barns when I had my shotgun or .22 along.
Pigeons were a problem in town too. Dad used to laugh at old Jack McCarthy, who owned Jack's Tavern. Jack lived on Center street by the Equity elevators and would put out feed for the pigeons. Dad laughed because the Equity was putting out feed for them too, right across the street, but what the Equity put out was poisoned.
Jack's tavern, by the way, sat at the corner of Main & Second. It burned some years ago and the spot is now a parking area. I spent a lot of time in there with Uncle Bill when I would go to town with him. Jack sold fishing tackle and guns there as well as alcohol, a situation that never caused problems but that would never be allowed in these days of anal PC.
Paul; bought his hunting rifle there when he came home. a Winchester model 70 Featherweight in .308. He brought it over to the house to show it to me. I got my first fishing tackle there too.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Saturday February 23, 2008 - 01:52pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Hunting Hodgepodge
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This is a mix of trips between 1962 when i first hunted and the fall of 1971 after I got out of the Navy.
I shot my first deer with Paul.
He bought a 14' Herter's fiberglass boat (the Resorter) and a Scott-Atwater motor of somewhere between 10 and 20 hp. He kept it in the creek for hunting, and we were in it and headed up the creek for a duck hunt when we saw deer on the bank. We went back home, traded shotguns for rifles, and went back. I dropped Paul off where the deer had been and then went on up the creek to the end of Bill's pasture and waited.
The deer moved out ahead of Paul towards me, running. The buck saw me, jumped in, and swam the creek. It looked farther away than it really was so I didn't shoot at it. Next up was the big doe, who went flying up the creek bank opposite me. Five shots later, she was out of range and unscathed. Last up was the smallest doe. My shot number six hit her back foot and she tripped and fell, shot number seven, the last in the gun went into her neck for an instant kill.
Paul said he never knew anyone could work a lever action so fast - and so poorly! I got a lot of teasing over my buck fever, but at least I had gotten my first deer.
I got my next deer a bit later with Gordon. I guess that in all the excitement I had forgotten to tag the first one, so he took me hunting up on Peter's ridge in his old Studebaker pickup.
We were poking along as we drove and another truck passed us. Just as that truck went out of sight its brake lights came on and a few seconds later there was a shot. We drove on up and found them with an elk they had just gotten.
Past there a few miles, some deer crossed the road ahead of us so we stopped, parked the truck, and went into the woods on foot. I jumped the deer first and it was kind of the same story - I ended up with an empty gun and a dead deer, and Gordon said he never knew anyone could work a lever action so fast - and so poorly! I thought four hits in seven shots at a running deer was okay, he didn't, since three of the four hits were just grazes that barely cut the deer's hair.
While we were dressing my deer out (Rather, Gordon was dressing it out and showing me how) when he looked up and saw another deer. He shot it and we went home victorious.
That ended my hunting for the year - Gordon made sure I tagged mine that time. (I have often said, Donal taught me how to hunt, but Gordon taught me sportsmanship.)
By the way, when Dad bought me the .30-30, Gordon was the first one I showed it to.
Dad went hunting with me a few times, usually with others, but we did take one trip down towards Thompson Falls that was just us. He & I & Gordon hunted together a few times, but usually it was just Gordon & me.
Dad went hunting with Paul up above Brown's Meadow and got separated. Mom was working at Sykes then and Dad had to be in town to pick her up. When Paul didn't show up, Dad drove around looking for him and then left for town to get Mom, then went home for the night.
Paul, in the meantime, came back to where the truck had been. When he realized Dad was gone, he hiked around and made sure he had been in the right spot, then hiked up to the top to the old lookout, now torn down, broke into it, and spent the night there.
Dad got Rudy and went back up the next morning looking for Paul and met him hiking down. Paul was furious, would not even accept a ride from him at first until Rudy talked him into getting in.
Paul went into town to the USFS offices, reported what he done, and paid for the damages. He didn't hunt with Dad after that.
Once Paul, Uncle Rudy, Rudy's father-in-law Kirk and I went hunting on Thomopson river. I shot a big doe, no one else got anything. Somewhere i have a few photos of that trip.
My ambition was to shoot a buck and Donal and Gordon cooperated with me on that but without success.
Gordon. We were were headed up Peter's Ridge again, this time in my Jeep, when we saw a nice buck on my side. I eased the door open and crawled out to shoot and about the time I was ready Gordon decided to step out and give me backup. He forgot that his door had an ear-splitting squeak, so when he opened it it spooked the buck. He felt awful.
To make up for it, a few miles later we saw a big doe. It was on Gordon's side but he refused to shoot it because he had messed up my chance. Naturally I proceeded to step out and miss it several times as it ran off.
We were up on Firefighter Mountain hunting in the snow on a foggy, bleary day. Gordon saw a deer and shot it. While he was getting his stuff together I walked out to the deer - which was MUCH closer than it had looked. It was a lot smaller than we thought too!
I was standing over it when Gordon was walking up and asked me where he hit it. I held the deer up head high in my left hand, pointed with my tight, and said "Right here!" The look on his face was priceless. We stopped at the F&G checking station on the way out and the F&G guy asked Gordon how what he had shot it with, and then asked how he had managed to get such a big bullet into such a tiny creature.
Gordon, Dad & I went over to Townsend to hunt once for a few days. I knew the game warden there, Jim Bird, and he advised us as to the best areas. We set up Gordon's tent in his yard as a base and hunted for several day.
The first day we saw deer everywhere, so many we got picky about what we would shoot. Of course, after that the deer all disappeared.
I jumped a buck in the timber, missed it three time as it ran in the trees. Dad heard the shots, asked Gordon if he thought it was a distress signal. Gordon said no, three shots was about as many as I could get off at a deer in that timber.
We had a great time but didn't get anything. On the way back, Gordon was driving. There was a stick in the road and he swerved to miss it and hit it dead center. Dad congratulated him on his skill, cause an average driver would have missed it. Gordon took the ribbing with good humor. That was also the trip when we were exploring some roads and I was driving. We hit a dead end on a skid trail on a steep hillside and there was no wide spot to turn. The area below the road was somewhat open, so Dad pointed down and said "You have four wheel drive - back in there!"
I stuck the Jeep in low range 4x4 and proceeded to do just what he suggested - though I guess he was kidding and it upset Gordon a bit. Anyway, it was touch and go with a lot of spinning and clawing on the Jeeps's part, but we got back up on the road and headed back out.
Fun times.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Saturday February 23, 2008 - 12:22pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
I guess if I slack off at this it is hard to get back into the remembrance game. Sorry, I'll try to improve.
Hodgson: After I left the school increased in size to the point that it needed remodeling. I am not sure what was done inside, but a basement was added. Shortly after that it was hit by the consoliodation wave and incorporated into the Somers schol district. The old school furnishing were given away to the community so I snagged the old dictionary and the globe.
That old Webster's resided, laying flat and opened, on the top of a low cabinet at the north end of the room next to the pencil sharpener. The teachers used to give us a lot of assignments that made us look things up in it. Now it sits on my shelf at home, tattered and torn and chock full of memories.
Grandma's place. The Streit farm. What a bunch of fun and happy memories I have of there. If I could go back in time, it would be to one of those great afternoons or evenings I spent there. I miss those peoples and times.
TBC
Hodgson: After I left the school increased in size to the point that it needed remodeling. I am not sure what was done inside, but a basement was added. Shortly after that it was hit by the consoliodation wave and incorporated into the Somers schol district. The old school furnishing were given away to the community so I snagged the old dictionary and the globe.
That old Webster's resided, laying flat and opened, on the top of a low cabinet at the north end of the room next to the pencil sharpener. The teachers used to give us a lot of assignments that made us look things up in it. Now it sits on my shelf at home, tattered and torn and chock full of memories.
Grandma's place. The Streit farm. What a bunch of fun and happy memories I have of there. If I could go back in time, it would be to one of those great afternoons or evenings I spent there. I miss those peoples and times.
TBC
Tags: | Edit Tags Saturday February 23, 2008 - 10:19am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Ask Dr. Helen: Is Male Bashing Curable?
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“We’re tired of the way the media portrays us as either abusive, career-driven, slovenly, or one of the myriad of other male stereotypes,” one married man complains to Dr. Helen Smith. She sympathizes.
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So many of you have emailed me and commented in response to my last column, Single Men in Never-Neverland, that I decided to follow up in a similar vein with another letter from a married man who wonders if his “maleness” is worth fighting for:
Dr. Helen,Dear Married Man:I am a 30 year-old married man. I have been with my wife for eight and a half years, and we’ve been married for five of those. Throughout my youth I was surrounded by women who, to be diplomatic about it, weren’t of the best opinion when it came to me. As a result, my mother, aunts, and to a small extent my older sister, would constantly make both my father and myself question our worth simply because of our gender. I’m more than willing to put it out there that karma is a fickle thing and that many members of my gender might deserve this type of abuse, but I’d also like to comment that because of this underhanded and maybe unconscious abuse by the women in my youth, I tend to not talk to them that often. Of course then I get chided for not keeping in touch with my family.
It is also, with no small amount of smugness, that I remind my mother that every woman in my family has been divorced at least once and all of the men in the family are on their first marriage; we must be doing something right. I’ve never cheated on my wife - or anyone, for that matter. I was only with a handful of other women before dating her. I still believe that there are very noble things about my gender but, as you mentioned, there seems to be a law of diminishing return when it comes to being a man.
A few years ago Lionel Richie allowed his wife to knock him around a bit. When the media started to question his masculinity he reminded them that it didn’t matter what line of defense he took, the media would turn it on him; if he hit his wife back in defense or retaliation, he’d become a woman-beater and abusive husband, but if he sat there and took it, he’s labeled as less than a man. It doesn’t matter what we do, we’re vilified through the narrow focus of society and the media. The world has changed and it’s folly to believe that our gender hasn’t changed with it.
While I understand and celebrate things such as the civil and equal rights movements, I deplore the animosity toward men that, I feel, was birthed from them. Despite this, I still believe that there are honorable men in the world today. I still believe that there are good men out there, despite the media’s attempts to tell me otherwise. I still believe that men are a necessary part of society, despite what science is beginning to tell us; that sperm has been crafted from stem cells was an inevitability. I believe that for a very long time men have held up the world by both altruism and greed. I believe that the equilibrium that is gender equity has shifted, and now the onus of responsibility has fallen - not out of disrespect - to women. For better or worse it’s an arguable proposition that men have been integral to the advancement of the human race in many, many different ways. I’m starting to believe that the responsibility for the world may now lie with women not because the honorable and noble men of the world are ignorant or lazy, but because we’re tired.
We’re tired of the way the media portrays us as either abusive, career-driven, slovenly, or one of the myriad of other male stereotypes. We’re tired of the barrage of abuse that we may or may not deserve. And we’re tired of always having to be the ones to carry the weight of the human race. We’ve chosen a different path than our forefather Sisyphus, however; rather than keep pushing that weight up the hill we’ve chosen to cast it to the ground to see who will pick it up. Very many women have risen to the task and succeeded admirably, but it has never been fashionable to criticize a woman for not picking up that weight whereas it is always socially acceptable to criticize my own gender. In seeing who has stepped up to the task at hand, it is important to maintain a critical eye toward both genders, however, and perhaps for the first time the other gender can see that it’s really not as easy as history and the media has made it seem.
The media is singularly focused on the damage that society inflicts upon the feminine psyche and form but pays no attention to the unending attack on the psychology of the male gender. So why fight it? Apathy is much easier than fighting a losing battle and it is, indeed, a losing battle when most of the world is against you. So why fight? If women want the responsibility of running the world, then you can have it. I’m a good husband, a hard worker, and a good friend. And that’s all that I need to be. I don’t blame any of my hardships on anyone other than myself, but I will not abuse myself and dwell in these stereotypes and dim modes of thought.
So now that all of that is out of the way, and despite the way it sounds all of that stream of consciousness above sounds a hell of a lot less self-indulgent in my head than it probably does in the ether, my question for you is this:
Why should we fight this battle when the odds are so weighted against us?
[Readers, the above letter is rather long, but I left it in its mostly unedited form because I believe the writer raises some very good points that I would like to address.]
First, let’s change this question from how the collective, “all men”— to the individual—you—can learn to handle negative stereotypes of men in the culture. It really does sound tiring to think that one has to fight a battle just for being male in our society. Having dealt with a lifetime of putdowns for your male gender from one of the most important persons in your life—your mother—it is no wonder you feel like Sisyphus pushing that rock up a hill. Your desire is to just give up, let women and the men who support them, take hold of the reins while you retreat and lick your wounds. Perhaps there is a middle ground between an all out “battle” and 100% retreat. I suspect part of your difficulty is a psychological one. You have a hard time dealing with the fact that someone who is supposed to love you is also making you miserable and doesn’t even seem to care! You mention that your mother may be doing this unconsciously, without awareness that she is hurting you. This may truly be the case (hard as it is to believe that someone is that unaware, but people can be dense). Start by giving her the benefit of the doubt.
Next time she starts saying derogatory things about you or other men, say politely, “Mom, it really hurts me when you say things like that about men. You may not be aware of how you are coming across but I feel like you don’t like me when you say that ‘all men are (fill in the blank).’ Please try to consider my feelings and refrain from saying bad things about men because you are also saying them about me. I know that you care about me and don’t want to hurt me that way.” With any luck, your mother will look upset or concerned and try to bite her tongue in the future. If she lapses once in a while, give her a bit of a break—just gently remind her again that she is hurting you with her statements.
But what do you do if she doesn’t respond at all? That is, she simply keeps up with the negative putdowns against you and your gender? The next step is, “Mom, you are an abuser. Until you learn some self-control, I cannot be around you except once in a while for perfunctory family holidays. If I am not around as much as you would like, you have chosen to keep me away with your sexist abusive attitude towards me.”
And mean it. Simply go to whatever obligatory family functions you must and do not allow her to “chide” you about not coming over more. Finally, it does not serve any psychological purpose to smugly tell the female family members that they are not so great at marriage. That sounds a bit passive-aggressive. Be direct. Let the female members of the family know how you feel about they are saying and make them take responsibility for it.
Now that we have looked at what you can do on an individual level with family, what about the greater world? Does it matter that you hear negative comments about men and should you do anything or just forget it? It depends on your personality. I am not the kind of person who can sit back when I hear toxic comments.
To give you an example, I was once at a Ruby Tuesday’s restaurant with my husband and daughter having dinner and listening to our pregnant waitress gush about her baby being due soon. “Do you know if you’re having a girl or boy?” I asked. “Oh, a girl, of course, we don’t need anymore men in the world!” Taken aback, I loudly said across the restaurant, “What do you mean, we don’t need ANY MORE MEN in the world? What an ugly sexist thing to say!” The waitress looked embarrassed and went slinking away, probably to the back where she spit in my food, but I didn’t care. I bet to this day, she will think twice before opening her mouth in such a nasty and utterly selfish way.
Okay, I felt good about that experience, but maybe you would not. Yet, I can’t help but think that aversive conditioning is not a bad way to react to people who think it is their God-given right to male bash. They do it because it is socially acceptable and there are not only no consequences for it, but often both men and women get kudos for “sticking it to the man.”
One thing, Married Man, that you must remember about human nature, (and especially women) is that most people are terrified of confrontation and will do anything to avoid it. They want to be liked or at least feel that they are a person worth liking. Make it unpleasant for them to let out their toxic tirades and they will stop—and it often takes so little effort. Notice that people in public places and the media rarely say anything derogatory about women. Why? It is socially unacceptable and they are afraid to. Make it costly for people to bash men and they will stop. Start with small steps—if all men and the women who gave a damn spoke up or told people to knock it off when the male bashing started, we would hear a lot less of it.
As far as the media goes, I like what Lionel Richie did in the case you mentioned of his wife beating him. He did not blame himself but nor did he blame his wife—for he knew that this would backfire. Instead, he put the media in a double bind, “It doesn’t matter what I do or say, I will be villainized.” He turned the focus away from himself and to the fact that men in our society can never do or say the right thing, no matter what. He spoke up for all men in that regard—and at least clearly stated the problem. And his career still seems to be on track.
The good news is that more and more men and women are turning away from the MSM and its negative approach to the world. There is so much alternative media now with talk radio, the internet, cable stations that cater to men and other sources of entertainment that one can easily find other like-minded individuals who can make you feel less alone and off-set some of the negative stereotypes you mentioned. I find myself getting upset when I watch a number of MSM shows and therefore, have a few funny sitcoms that I watch if I want to unwind. I rarely watch the regular channels because the propaganda is too much for me to tolerate.
Finally, you do not have to prove your “worth” to anyone. You mentioned that you are a good husband, worker, and friend. That is indeed, good enough. You are not the catalyst for all of the evil stereotypes that some misinformed people wish to project onto the male gender. Disavow yourself of that, for shouldering that burden would make anyone tired. Live your life in a way that brings you satisfaction and let the naysayers wallow in their inflexible negativity.
I could go on forever, but at the risk of boring anyone reading this, I will end with some questions for others to comment on and/or think about:
Is maleness worth fighting for, can the culture be “cured” of its malebashing nature, or is the fight just not worth the hassle? Would it be better to let women take over the burden of running things? Also, any personal experiences with negative male stereotypes and how you handled the situation would be welcome.
Tags: | Edit Tags Thursday February 21, 2008 - 03:26pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
I have been slow posting this one and I am still not sure I have it thought out properly.
I guess I'll just cover the outline.
Gordon & Lois were born-again Christians. Not Bible-thumpers, not condemners, not self-righteous, but kind and loving and nonjudgemental people who lived their faith on a daily basis. Faith by example, the only effective testimony.
For years they extended the invitation to attend church with them but I refused. I claimed to be an agnostic.
One day when I was 16 I hit bottom in my life, a point where the best solution seemed to be dying. Instead, I took Gordon up on his offer of a ride to church. That event change the entire course of my life. It saved my life.
No. I am not going to give details. Many things that happened I can't express properly, some things I want to keep private, but most of my silence is going to be summed up in one sentence: I do not talk about my beliefs because I do not live up to them.
Gordon was a real father to me, and Lois became my "Other Mother" - with all the love of a mother tempered with wisdom and enough distance from me to be objective. Between them, they guided me and molded me into who I am today.
Gordon died in 1978. Shortly before he died he gave me the greatest compliment I have ever gotten - "All things considered, you've turned out all right." Yeah, I know, sounds like pretty faint praise, but from Gordon it meant a lot. It would take a book to tell how much he taught me by his words and most of all by his example.
Enough.
TBC
I guess I'll just cover the outline.
Gordon & Lois were born-again Christians. Not Bible-thumpers, not condemners, not self-righteous, but kind and loving and nonjudgemental people who lived their faith on a daily basis. Faith by example, the only effective testimony.
For years they extended the invitation to attend church with them but I refused. I claimed to be an agnostic.
One day when I was 16 I hit bottom in my life, a point where the best solution seemed to be dying. Instead, I took Gordon up on his offer of a ride to church. That event change the entire course of my life. It saved my life.
No. I am not going to give details. Many things that happened I can't express properly, some things I want to keep private, but most of my silence is going to be summed up in one sentence: I do not talk about my beliefs because I do not live up to them.
Gordon was a real father to me, and Lois became my "Other Mother" - with all the love of a mother tempered with wisdom and enough distance from me to be objective. Between them, they guided me and molded me into who I am today.
Gordon died in 1978. Shortly before he died he gave me the greatest compliment I have ever gotten - "All things considered, you've turned out all right." Yeah, I know, sounds like pretty faint praise, but from Gordon it meant a lot. It would take a book to tell how much he taught me by his words and most of all by his example.
Enough.
TBC
Tags: | Edit Tags Thursday February 21, 2008 - 01:57pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
- Warning!
- READ CAREFULLY. By reading this blog, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.Tags: | Edit Tags Tuesday February 19, 2008 - 03:23pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment
- BrainDead
- Tags: | Edit Tags Friday February 15, 2008 - 10:41am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
- HOM: Gordon - The background
- Gordon was a Californio, born there right at the end of WWI. He grew up in a tough area of gangs and knife fights and had the scars and the mental and physical toughness to show for it.
He was a Coast Guard Hospitalman in WWII on a ship in the Pacific, worked in an insane asylum for a while and eventually became a policeman in San Bernardino.
He met his wife, Lois in a nightclub. Lois was working at an office in CA and some of the girls she worked with decided on a girl's night out. At the club, two groups of servicemen (Sailors & Marines, I think) simultaneously swung by their table to try picking them up and a fight ensued. Lois stood up, someone slammed into her, and she fell into the lap of the USCG HMC at another table.
The HMC was Gordon, his ship left the next day, they corresponded, and when his ship came back they got married, a marriage that lasted until his death in 1978.
He was a motorcycle cop, and took a medical retirement in 1960 after a lady ran a red light and hit his motorcycle broadside.
He told me a few stories of his LEO years. When he first walked a beat, he interrupted a robbery as the robber was climbing out a window. The robber pulled a gun and shot at him, but missed. Target training took over - Gordon took the classic pose of extended arm, feet wide apart, body angled 45 degrees from the target - cock, align sites, squeeze trigger, repeat. He didn't miss.
(Side note: when the fecal material hits the rotating blades, training takes over. Your body and mind go on automatic before you even have time to think. Good training builds good habits that keep you alive. When noted Border Patrol officer and national pistol champion Charles Askins Jr. went into his first gun battle, he carefully ejected the empties from his revolver into his hand and dropped them into his pants pocket, just as he been trained - NOT a survival trait. LEO training is much more reallistic and effective now.)
Another time Gordon cornered an armed man in a basement room and ordered him to drop his gun - not a good idea with a cocked pistol and a concrete floor and walls! The pistol fired and the bullet ricocheted all over the room. Gordon said it must have been over in a fraction of a second but he said it seemed like he and the crook stared into each other's eyes for minutes, waiting for that buzzing wild shot to hit one or the other of them. Luckily, it hit something inamate solidly enough to stop first.
One episode that gave him nightmares was coming upon a car wreck moments after it happened and seeing the head of an infant sitting upright on the pavement with the eyes and mouth still moving. Another was chasing another motorcycle one night on rural roads and the biker hit a cow.
When the lady that ended his carerr ran the red light, he saw her coming. He tried to stiff-arm the car and and jump off the bike but all he did was break his left arm and raise his left foot far enough for it to be crushed between the car bumper and the bike engine, then was thrown onto the curb hard enough to split his helmet and give him double vision for a while. He sat up, bloody and dazed, and said "Lady, I have to give you a ticket for running that light."
The prognosis was that he would never walk again, but it was wrong. He had always loved hunting and fishing and was able to do both in later years.
More Gordon later.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Thursday February 14, 2008 - 12:24pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Happy Valentine's Day!
- Tags: | Edit Tags Thursday February 14, 2008 - 11:00am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
- HOM: Canasta
- The only card game I ever came close to mastering.
Grandma, Bill, Paul and sometimes Mom & Dad played this a lot, though Dad preferred Pinochle.
When the weather was bad I used to stay at Grandma's. The bus ran right by her house unless weather was so bad school was closed. Most of the evenings were spent playing Canasta with Paul & I usually partnered against Bill & Grandma and sometimes tempers flared pretty high.
One stunt I truly regret ended the Canasta games with the four of us. Bill used to get pretty vocal when he was losing and Paul had a tape recorder. Bad combination! There was a grate in the ceiling to let the heat into the upper floor where Bill & Paul's bedrooms were, so during a break in the game I went up, switched on the recorder and lowered the mike through the grate.
When the game ended, I went up, got the recorder, brought it down, set it on the table and played back the game, complete with Bill's cussing and accusations, Grandma's chiding, and Paul's laughing. Bill never played Canasta with me again - by the time he cooled off and forgot about it I was out of High School and away from home.
If I could, I would apologize to him right now - it never occurred to me that I shamed & embarrassed him. I only saw the humor at the time.
The last time I ever played Canasta was in college and I thoroughly got my butt kicked - so thoroughly I suspect my opponent was cheating, but that might be pride speaking.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Wednesday February 13, 2008 - 04:57pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
8
- HOM: Fambly Memories
- Some of the Streits, like many farmers, were readers. Uncle Bill liked westerns and the old "Ranch Romance" & "True Detective" style magazines. Rudy liked Science Fiction & Westerns. Grandma Streit read Westerns, but in her later years she, like Mom, spent many hours playing solitaire when she couldn't read.
After television came along, it replaced some of the reading. "As The World Turns" was one show neither Grandma or Bill would miss - EVERYTHING had to come to a halt while it was on! Mom used to shake her head at them, saying that you could watch the show once a month and not miss anything important.
TV altered our lives for a while - George Wagner got the first TV in the area, and used to invite us over to watch it. When we got our own, we ate a lot of meals in the living room off of trays so we could see our favorite programs. I loved the old westerns, and "Have Gun, Will Travel" and "Gunsmoke" were family favorites. Lawrence Welk was one of Dad's favorites.
Before TV, there was radio, and I used to rush home from school to listen to "Sky King" and "Sergeant Preston Of The Yukon & His Dog King", while Mom & Dad listened to "Fibber Magee & Molly", "The Shadow", and "The Lone Ranger". Mom got me a little crystal set shaped like a spaceship. Attach an antenna & headphones & tune by pulling the nose cone in and out and Voila! - music! I used to sneak it into bed at night and listen under the covers. ( I used to use a flashlight to read under the covers, but Mom usually caught me & confiscated the flashlight. The radio wasn't as easily spotted.)
"Sky King", by the way, always ended each show with a cliffhanger and the last show our local station aired ended with the heroes wrecking their plane on an island. I haunted the radio for a long time but never found the program again, so I guess they died on that island.
Hmmm - the term "grain of salt" popped into my head while I was wondering how far to trust my memories and triggered a very vivid one. Dad came in from the field for lunch and we were at the table. Mom was getting something from the stove when Dad picked up the salt shaker and realized it was empty. He didn't say a word - he just threw it over his shoulder towards Mom. She never said anything either, just picked it up, filled it and put it back on the table. I guess I took all that sort of for granted but when I got older I realized he was lucky he didn't get a frying pan alongside his head.
Meal times, as I think I have mentioned, were pretty stressful most of the time. I always wanted to bring a book to the table to escape into but that was never allowed. Now, any household I am a part of allows books at the table - and dogs under the table.
OK, let's get this back on topic. Reading.
I learned over the years to write down the details when I loaned a book out. Rudy borrowed a book from me called "Avalanche" about the discovery of Sperry Glacier up in the park that was signed by the author. He did not bring it back, and when I asked for it denied ever having it. After he died and his widow, Eilene, went through his things she found the book on his shelf and returned it to me. I guess my relationship with Rudy deserves its own column one of these days. It was kind of rocky.
I was given a couple of books by James Oliver Curwood that had belonged to Ian, and we had a neighbor where Jellars live now named Harold Olson. Harold had some of Curwood's books and used to loan them to me and eventually gave them to me. I still have them.
As a side note, when I wrote an article on book collecting for Gun Digest the lead paragraphs dealt with these JOC books.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Wednesday February 13, 2008 - 11:39am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Entry for February 12, 2008
- Tags: | Edit Tags Tuesday February 12, 2008 - 11:16am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
- HOM: Paul
- Paul Streit was my youngest uncle, and for a while after he came home he was my best friend.
He loved to fish and hunt and enjoyed companionship when he was outdoors, so he started inviting me along on his expeditions. That fall, 1962, I bought my first shotgun, a Winchester model 12 magnum, so I could hunt with him. I still own it! Paul also bought a Remington Nylon bolt-action .22 and I bought one just like it. (Actually, Paul bought one of the Remington Nylon lever-actions first, but it gave him so many problems he took it down to the creek and threw it off the bridge and then bought the bolt-action.)
Ducks, geese, pheasants and grouse were the quarry and we covered almost every inch of huntable ground on the surrounding farms - usually with permission, but not always. The banks of Ashley Creek and the slough & island behind Jim Weaver's were our favorite haunts and we covered them thoroughly by boat and on foot.
Memorable moments? Well, there was the time we separated in the woods on Weaver's island and headed down parallel gullies a hundred yards or so apart - and didn't know that they nearly converged a little ways on. A pheasant flushed ahead of me and to my right. I swung, fired, the rooster veered away and went down. I went after it and found Paul holding it. I thanked him for getting it for me and he asked me what I was talking about - he had shot it! A pretty heated discussion followed.
I showed Paul my empty shell where I had fired as proof it was my bird, and when he tried to find his empty as proof he had fired it turned out to still be in the gun. We finally sorted out that we had fired at the same time. Dressing the bird out showed that he had hit it from the rear & I had hit it from the side.
Paul shot a coyote when we were hunting in the brush, and the farm dog, Arlie, walked up and sniffed the dead animal and then turned away and got sick.
We hunted the island in Church slough (Named for an old trapper that lived on the island in the early days) a lot too. The ponds - potholes - it contained were loaded with ducks and the brush was home to pheasants and grouse.
One morning Paul saw a big flock of ducks close to a brushy shore there and made a long solo stalk on his belly till he crawled into range and had a number of them in line. He carefull fired, hoping for a maximum kill, but for several moments afterwards nothing happened till a voice came out of the brush nearby saying "DON"T SHOOT MY DECOYS!". Paul made a reverse crawl and left unseen, feeling a little lower than his belly had been.
Strange, writing this, to discover I still have mixed feelings about Paul that color the fun we had. Well, writing these episodes has pulled out a lot of memories about everyone I grew up around, most of them pretty good.
There will be more about Paul later, and more fun with him, but just to jump ahead a bit - our friendship took a real hit a couple of years later.
I walked into Grandma's to see him, and he would not speak to me. He was angry at me and I couldn't figure out why. He finally told me I had been eavesdropping on his phone calls on the old party line. When I told him I couldn't have because we were on different phone lines he didn't believe me.
I withdrew, literally, physically and emotionally, from him, and from everyone else for a while. One part of me understood that Paul's mental illness required him to take medications but that that same illness made him refuse the meds sometimes, and he had been off of them when this happened. The rest of me just felt rejected by someone I had liked and trusted.
Later on we did start hunting together again, but it was never quite the same.
Okay - that subject is now closed.
Heh - before I went in the service I bought a Jeep & Paul & I used it a lot to explore. I got on a dim trail in it and we followed it till it ended. When I was doing the back-and-fill turning in limited space required I backed into a little pine and pushed it over. That caught Paul's funny bone and for the rest of the day he kept pointing out huge trees and telling me to try pushing them over.
Before I knew him, after he came home from the service, he drove a bus and worked at the Flathead mine with Rudy, then drove a bus for the Hungry Horse Dam project. He told me of the time he was trying to open a chute with a crowbar. When the chute wouldn't open he tried wedging the bar in up fairly high and then jumping up, grabbing the bar in both hands, and letting his full weight hang from it. The only problem was that the bar slipped, and if he hadn't been wearing a helmet the dent the bar made would have been in his skull instead of the aluminum.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Monday February 11, 2008 - 01:01pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment - HOM: Forgot These!
- Ian had a motorcycle - for a very short while! He had a mishap in the long old driveway and ended up landing in a barbed wire fence. I have no idea how old he was at the time, but he loaded the bike in the truck, hauled it to towna and sold it. He was done with two wheeled transportation..
Also, Uncle Tom put one finger on his dog's nose and one on a sparkplug on an old gas engine (running) to see what would happen. He thought it was funnier than the dog did, but didn't repeat the trick.
Vic Bjornrud took Tom duck hunting once. He put him in a blind at the end of the slough with some decoys set out and then hiked around the perimeter of the slough, scaring up all the ducks he could. He knew that most would land in the decoys, but never heard a shot from Tom. When he completed the circuit, there was Tom, sound asleep in the blind with dozens of ducks swimming around right in front of him.
Uncle Bill, like most of the farmers in the depression, depended a lot on the fruit of the land for survival and ignored the fish and game laws . They did not harvest much wildlife and none of what they took was wasted, but the game wardens still tried to stop them.
Bill liked to fish out of the river when the season was closed, and kept his tackle hidden on the bank so he wouldn't attract attention carrying it back and forth. One day Vic, who trapped the river for beaver and such, found Bill's stash. Being a bit mischievous, he dug out the envelope with his trapper's license, tore off the F&G portion of the address label, and tied it to Bill's pole. When Bill found it, he treated it as a friendly warning from the local warden, Old Archie, and told everyone what a great guy the warden was for warning him. Vic never did break the truth to him.
The fields in the late winter and early spring were sometimes black with ducks and geese, and Uncle Rudy took Grampa's old Winchester 97 out to try for some. He crawled around and got a bunch of fowl lined together and touched off a shot, hoping for a big bag of game with little expenditure of ammo. The problem was that he had managed to plug the end of the gun barrel with mud and when he fired he blew the end of the barrel off and bagged no ducks at all.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Sunday February 10, 2008 - 08:46pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Mixed Memories
- I was in fifth or sixth grade when I had a day when I REALLY didn't want to go to school so I told Mom I was sick. Mom knew instantly what was up, so she called the teacher to tell her I wouldn't be there and then she made me go to bed. Too sick for school, too sick to be out of bed!
Then she followed up with "Too sick for school, too sick for games in bed!" and topped it off with "Too sick for school, too sick to read, too sick to even have the lights on!" and "Too sick for school, too sick to have your dog in the room with you!"
Her "cure" worked pretty well - I felt fine by noon and was ready to go to school!
I remember Ella Siderius, my teacher for the first three years of grade school, as a totalitarian dictator and now I think she really might have been one. The teacher before her had quit, totally unable to handle the rowdiness and rudeness of the kids, so I suspect the school board was looking for a "drill sergeant" type when they hired her. They got one! (Alternatively, one school board member felt they ought to kick out every kid in the school and start from scratch with a fresh batch!)
Luckily, it was Edith Grant and not Ella that was teaching when I had my "sick day".Tags: | Edit Tags Sunday February 10, 2008 - 10:46am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Recycling
- I am a packrat. There, a confession! However, I blame my Mom for that...
Mom was frugal. She saved and reused anything she could, from the buttons off discarded shirts to plastic Oleo tubs with lids to the wire ties from bread sacks. If something wasn't completely destroyed, she saved it - just in case! (Being an only child, I was spared most of the hand-me-down clothes lots of us were afflicted with, however.)
I know Mom was a survivor of the depression years and am pretty sure that she was also the product of a frugal household. "Waste not, Want not" may not have been her motto, but she sure followed the guideline and I guess she passed it on to me.
When my metal flatbed toy truck broke in half, I flipped over the back part and used it as a pretend paddlewheel boat. When the wheels came off of my little wagon, I used it as a sled. Discarded wooden items like old spigots became toy guns. Improvise and re-use!
Growing up around farmers & loggers didn't help any either - the pride and joy of every shop was the scrap pile, supplied by the breaking up of old machinery and supplying material for fixing other machines. Very little was actually thrown away if it was made of metal or wood.
Dad is somewhat that way too. I still remember how excited he was (and how unthrilled Mom was) when he came home from an auction with a huge bin of nails and screws and miscellaneous small parts and mystery objects. He ended up putting them out by the old gas house and I am not sure he ever used any the gadgets but I had fun digging through them.
One of the drawbacks to the "save and re-use" scheme is that "saving" translates into "Taking Up Space". I have this bad habit of saving old wallwarts, small cloth/canvas/nylon/leather bags, all kinds of switches and wires, nuts and bolts and ...and... well, you get the idea. Another drawback is organization, or lack thereof. It frustrates me to KNOW I have something but have no clue where it is. I dream of a storeroom with walls that consist entirely of mixed size drawers, all neatly labeled with contents thereof, but reality is a jumble of bags and boxes and drawers of thoroughly scrambled contents.
(Flashback: Grandpa Streit gave me an old treadle sewing machine to take apart. Disassembly was great - but reassembly didn't work. Too many left over parts... Actually, 50+ years later, I STILL tend to have a few left-over small parts after every project. Once in a while, one of the left-overs turns out to have been important!)
Anyway, my packrat tendencies make my bland disregard of neatness into a nigh-terminal condition. One day I should do an Aslett and declutter, but I am pretty sure the possibly-useful will drift right back in again and in a year or two I will be in the same boat - except that I will have developed a critical need for some particular piece of stuff discarded in the decluttering and will spend a while regretting my burst of energy.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Saturday February 9, 2008 - 01:04pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Tags: | Edit Tags Saturday February 9, 2008 - 10:47am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
BEES and no birds.
One summer there was a huge yellow-jackets nest under the eaves of the garage, so being young and dumb I decided blasting it with a shot gun would be a good idea. Wrong.
I was smart enough to sneak up to the corner farthest from the nest and lean out just enough to aim and fire, but then I got distracted by all the commotion and just stared. Bees (Yes, I know Yellow Jackets are not bees. Tough!) formed a small cloud around the shattered nest, milling around the shreds. Buck, my little Cocker Spaniel, went running over to see what was going on and the "cloud" arrowed out after him. After a couple of yips that I assume marked stings, he outran them.
I got so interested in watching the main force of bees I didn't see the stragglers milling around until I got stung and then it was my turn to run. I guess I won - they abandoned the nest - but it was a Phyrric victory.
Another bee story, this time one i wasn't involved in, happened to a neighbor. There was a medium sized nest under his eaves and he decided a simple way to get rid of both nest and bees would be to slip a large coffee can over the nest, use it to tear the nest loose, and then slap a lid on the can before the bees could escape. He made one miscalculation - he set the lid down a bit too far away to reach while he held the can in place against the eaves. He was pretty fast, but the bees were faster and he got pretty well stung.
(This is the same neighbor who was working on his outboard motor while his family was swimming. He wondered if he was getting spark to the plug so he called his wife over and had her hold the wire in one hand and put a finger on the plug. When he cranked the motor over he got a lot more sparks than he planned on!)
(Flashback: George Wagner was putting up an electric fence with his wife's help. He hooked the wire to the fence charger and handed the metal spool to her. She headed for the corner of the pasture, letting the wire roll out behind her under tension, and was almost to the post when George plugged in the fencer. He had to finish the fencing without her help...)
(FlashForward: George was also the one who asked my wife why she didn't swim in her birthday suit and I piped up that it needed ironing. Ouch!)
TBC
One summer there was a huge yellow-jackets nest under the eaves of the garage, so being young and dumb I decided blasting it with a shot gun would be a good idea. Wrong.
I was smart enough to sneak up to the corner farthest from the nest and lean out just enough to aim and fire, but then I got distracted by all the commotion and just stared. Bees (Yes, I know Yellow Jackets are not bees. Tough!) formed a small cloud around the shattered nest, milling around the shreds. Buck, my little Cocker Spaniel, went running over to see what was going on and the "cloud" arrowed out after him. After a couple of yips that I assume marked stings, he outran them.
I got so interested in watching the main force of bees I didn't see the stragglers milling around until I got stung and then it was my turn to run. I guess I won - they abandoned the nest - but it was a Phyrric victory.
Another bee story, this time one i wasn't involved in, happened to a neighbor. There was a medium sized nest under his eaves and he decided a simple way to get rid of both nest and bees would be to slip a large coffee can over the nest, use it to tear the nest loose, and then slap a lid on the can before the bees could escape. He made one miscalculation - he set the lid down a bit too far away to reach while he held the can in place against the eaves. He was pretty fast, but the bees were faster and he got pretty well stung.
(This is the same neighbor who was working on his outboard motor while his family was swimming. He wondered if he was getting spark to the plug so he called his wife over and had her hold the wire in one hand and put a finger on the plug. When he cranked the motor over he got a lot more sparks than he planned on!)
(Flashback: George Wagner was putting up an electric fence with his wife's help. He hooked the wire to the fence charger and handed the metal spool to her. She headed for the corner of the pasture, letting the wire roll out behind her under tension, and was almost to the post when George plugged in the fencer. He had to finish the fencing without her help...)
(FlashForward: George was also the one who asked my wife why she didn't swim in her birthday suit and I piped up that it needed ironing. Ouch!)
TBC
Tags: | Edit Tags Friday February 8, 2008 - 03:42pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
- HOM: A Mishmash
- When I was quite young there was an old root cellar just north of the driveway by the road. I used to love to play with my dog Penny on the little hill it formed. Dad was burning off the grass on it one spring and apparently the fire got into the wood beams that framed and supported the cellar. They burned through and the roof collapsed. The folks just had time to rescue a valuable scales they used for grain and potatoes. I missed my playground.
The pit that was the result of the collapse became the dump for the farm refuse - cans, limbs, whatever - until it filled. This took a while because annually Dad would pour gas over the contents and burn them off. Finally Dad finished topping it off with dirt and put the north extension of his driveway over the top of the site. Someday it might make an archaeologist very happy!
I liked to play and dig in the dirt in the pit, but my main memory of doing that is from the day I disturbed a yellow jacket nest and got a few stings. I don't think I played as much there afterward.
In my anti-social youth I was playing on the cellar mound with a slingshot when a neighbor went by. I let fly and shot the back window out of their car. I would have probably gotten into a lot of trouble for that, but within a day or so - before they told my folks about the window - their son totaled that car.
I know in my heart that I am the reason Mom's hair went gray...
Now - Flashforward: Before it slips my mind I want to mention that as far as I know I took Donal on his last hunt. It was in the '80s and he was living in Hot Springs then. I had a Stainless S&W .38 revolver I wanted to show him and he suggested a ride so he could shoot it. He took along his .22 rifle.
We saw a grouse along the road and Donal shot at it with the rifle but only wounded it - a sign of his failing health. In earlier years he would not have missed his aim like that. Anyway, the grouse ran and I took off after it on foot and chased it down. It cost me a torn shirt and some scratches but I retrieved it for Donal. I did not want his last hunt to be a failure.
Sentimental idiot that I am, I still have a .38 case that he had fired, and in it are the tail feathers of that grouse.Tags: | Edit Tags Friday February 8, 2008 - 10:58am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - More Donal
- Donal took me on my first camping trips. He had a wall tent with a stove and all the gear and experience, so all I had to furnish was a sleeping bag and labor for setting up, gathering firewood and carrying water.
My first sleeping bag was a cheap one, and on the first cold-weather trip we went on I was cold all night. The stove was near the foot of my bed area, so when Donal got up and fired it up for breakfast I slid the bag closer to the fire to soak up some of the warmth. Actually, I soaked up so much warmth I melted a hole in the bag. Donal thought that episode was a lot funnier than I did. The next night I drove some stakes into the ground to hold the bag in place and keep myself from doing it again.
In later years, Donal retired both the wall tent and the old Ford pickup and got a used Chevrolet 4x4, which he then built a plywood camper on. In those later years, I got a down insulated sleeping bag!
Donal had access to a lot of ranches because he knew the owners, and we saw some neat country together. I saw my first wild mountain goat on a hunt with him up in the mountains near Thompson Falls.
On day trips, there was a third person along most of the time - Donal's dog, Spike. Donal said when he first got him, Spike was too little to follow him and so he would carry Spike in his coat pocket. Spike was old when I knew him and his bad breath made some of the trips memorable.
Another Donal memory - we were following a logging truck on a dusty road when we came to a spot where the road looped around an old clearcut, so Donal shifted down, hit the gas, and took off crosscountry. He beat the truck to the far side of the clearcut by a fair margin, but it was sure a bouncy ride.
I caught my first pike with him in Lone Pine Reservoir, back in the day when that was the only place around here that had pike. We fished all day and the one small fish is all we got. We fished most of the lakes within a few hours drive of home but made a special effort to get to Lone Pine because he had heard so much about the pike there and had never caught one.
Once when I was hunting with him I saw a nice doe. I wanted to make sure I made a good shot so I leaned up against a little dead snag - which promptly fell over and took me with it. All I saw of the doe as I went down was two bulging eyes and a dropped jaw, then a white tail as she took off. Once again, Donal thought it was funnier than I did. (Well, at the time, anyway. Looking back now I laugh at those episodes!)
He spent a lot of time helping me try for a big buck, but things never worked out for us - I was alone when I found the big buck I finally shot.
We sure had some great times, and the only regret I have is that I remember so few of the many stories he told me of his life.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Wednesday February 6, 2008 - 03:29pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Good, Bad, Ugly . . .
- Tags: | Edit Tags Wednesday February 6, 2008 - 10:40am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
- HOM: Donal's guns
- In his quiet way, Donal was an NRA member and a gun nut, but only as it applied to hunting. He was not interested in owning guns he did not use but wanted the most efficient hunting tools he could afford.
When we first hunted, his rifle was an old Model 8 Remington semi-auto, originally in .300 Savage and later rebarreled to .308. He had modified it by adding a pistol grip with a dowel and wood putty. He said it was the safest gun he ever owned because of the design of the safety.
Later on, he retired the old Model 8 and bought a Winchester Model 100, also a semi-auto and also a .308. It had a horrendous trigger pull so he worked it down till he liked it but the side effect was that the gun would go full-auto unexpectedly. He returned it and got another Remington, a Model 740 ADL in .308. (ADL is the fancier version.)
He also owned a Colt Huntsman .22 and when his eyes began to give out he put a scope on it. Even with the scope he could do a very creditable fast draw and shoot accurately.
He bought a High Standard Sentinel .22, the nine-shot double action, which he used as a house gun for defense.
His .22 rifle was also a Remington semi-auto with a scope. It was a model 550.
His shotgun was a Remington 1100, but he was more of a rifleman and seldom used the shotgun.
I gave him a Ruana hand-made hunting knife for Christmas one year. He wore it once when he took me hunting and then put it up. Edith returned it to me when Donal died.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Tuesday February 5, 2008 - 09:42pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Memories Of Donal
- There are so many "Donal" stories they rate a book to themselves. I must have fished & hunted with Donal and listened to his stories for over ten years - from around 1960 into the early seventies.
Physically he was a little guy, maybe 5'6" and maybe 150 or so, but he was strong and fast. He was born in a cabin around 1900 up above Big Arm and spent most of his life in that country west of town.
At some point he worked with dynamite, wand was quite deaf as the result of an accident. He would not work with electricity because of another accident when someone switched on the circuit he was working on.
During the depression he had a ranch above Hot Springs on the hill west of town and supplemented his income with hunting and trapping for fur. He kept several families supplied with meat during the hard times.
He also worked at Hubbard dam when it was being built, pushing a wheelbarrow. This was in the days when men lined up for any job and the bosses took advantage of them. On this job, men would run a wheelbarrow till they dropped, then they would be fired and the next guy hired. Donal kept the job. He didn't drop and took all they dished out to him.
He worked on a fishing boat in Alaska, one that tended traps. He always wore a .44 revolver in those days and got razzed about it till the day a sea lion got in the trap and they needed to dispose of it. One shot from the .44 ended the depredations and the teasing.
(One story about the ranch above Hot Springs - Donal had two daughters, Dorothy & Donaldine. They rode horses from the ranch down to the school and one day the inevitable happened - one of the daughters was all dressed up for a special occasion and when she mounted up the horse bucked her into a big pile of fresh manure. Donal said that was the first time he realized just what a vocabulary she had!)
I think the first time he took me fishing, he had just gotten a second-hand boat and motor and wanted to try it out. He picked me up in his old early-fifties Ford pickup with all the gear loaded and I think we went to Ashley Lake. We got the 12ft boat in the water, gear loaded, motor gassed and mounted and shoved off, then Donal started cranking on the motor. And cranking. And cranking. He fiddled with the choke and the throttle and when the motor finally caught it was on full throttle and aimed straight for the bank. Donal had about five seconds to recover from a near-header over the stern and turn the boat before it hit the rocks - and made it with about a half-second to spare. He replaced the outboard with a new Evinrude 5hp right after that, but kept the boat.
Actually, he did lose the boat once. We had been fishing at Hubbard Dam, and the road was atrocious. When we got to the highway we didn't have a boat in the back, it had jiggled loose and bounced out. It was still laying in the middle of the road when we went back. After that he bolted it down.
Some other memories of Hubbard with Donal: Once I left my shirt off to get a tan and ended up getting blisters and another time I put the fish in a dark canvas bag as I caught them. I left the bag out in the sun and it got so hot the fish inside it cooked.
One lunch time there Donal was spreading homemade jam on a slice of bread when a yellowjacket landed on the bread. Donal contemplated it for a second, then said "Here you go!" and slapped a spoonful of jam over the bee. After a few seconds, this big red glob of jam vibrated and sprouted wings and went wobbling off into the trees. Sweet!
Donal was a deadly shot, fast and accurate, but that skill backfired on him once in a while. He jumped a deer at medium range, fired, and it fell, got up again, went down again at his next shot but was up again, then dropped with his last shot. The whole episode took perhaps 5 seconds. When he walked up, there lay three dead deer. He hadn't missed. The meat didn't go to waste, either.
He lived in a cabin above Lake Mary Ronan for a while and bagged the biggest buck of his life there. It was early one morning and he was still in the cabin and in his underwear when he glanced out and saw this enormous buck. He didn't hesitate - he grabbed the rifle and fired, bagging both the window and the buck. His wife was pretty upset, but he always said it was worth it.
When he first took me hunting he made me stay close by his side, and the first time he pointed up a ridge and said "I'll meet you up there" and left me alone, I felt like I had graduated into being a woodsman, albeit a neophyte one.
More Donal later!
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Tuesday February 5, 2008 - 04:15pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - John Steinbeck
- From "Bombs Away". Another point of the "Greatest Generation".
And we may be thankful that frightened civil authorities and specific Ladies Clubs have not managed to eradicate from the country the tradition of the possession and use of firearms, that profound and almost instinctive tradition of Americans. For one does not really learn to shoot a rifle or machine gun in a few weeks. Army gunnery instructors have thus described a perfect machine gunner: When he was six years old, his father gave him a .22 rifle and taught him to respect it as a dangerous weapon, and taught him to shoot it at a target. At nine, the boy ranged the hills and the woods, hunting squirrels, until his pointing of his rifle was as natural to him as the pointing of his finger. At twelve, the boy was given his first shotgun and taken duck hunting, quail hunting, and grouse hunting; and where, with the rifle, he had learned accuracy in pointing, he now learned the principle of leading a moving target, learned instinctively that you do not fire at the moving target, but ahead of it, and learned particularly that his gun is a deadly weapon, always to be respected and cared for. When such a boy enters the Air Force, he has the whole background of aerial gunnery in him before he starts, and he has only to learn the mechanisms of a new weapon, for the principles of shooting down enemy airplanes are exactly those of shooting a duck. Such a boy, with such a background, makes the ideal aerial gunner, and there are hundreds of thousands of them in America. Luckily for us, our tradition of bearing arms has not gone from the country, and the tradition is so deep and so dear to us that it is one of the most treasured parts of the Bill of Rights¾ the right of all Americans to bear arms, with the implication that they will know how to use them.Tags: | Edit Tags Tuesday February 5, 2008 - 01:07pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - JPSOFT: For Geeks
- JP Software Is Proud To Announce Take Command 9
We have completely redone Take Command. It now includes all the features
of Take Command, 4NT and TCI. Even better, we have merged graphical file
management (a la Windows Explorer) with the command line. It's the power
of the command line with the ease of use of a GUI.
It's just a better way to work:
* Manage multiple command processors in tabbed windows
* Drag and drop files
* Advanced cut and paste features
* See the results of command line actions immediately
* Find text in any tab window
* Customizable menu, toolbars and status bar
* Multiple themes and skins
* And yes, you can still run 4NT (now called TCC) by itself
You will save loads of time getting things done.
We have also added many new capabilities to our command language:
* Monitor system events, like file/folder changes, process and service
changes,
usb hookups, event logs, etc. and trigger actions with seven new
event monitoring commands
* Start and stop system services
* Create task dialogs in Vista
* Execute a command line after a batch file exits
* Over 300 enhancements to commands, variable functions and internal
variables
Check it out at http://jpsoft.com. It's our biggest upgrade ever and you
can get our special introductory price of $79.95 ($44.95 upgrade) now
through 2/28/2008. Then the price goes up to $99.95.
Contact Information:
JP Software
P.O. Box 328
Chestertown, MD 21620 USA
800-595-8197
operations@jpsoft.comTags: | Edit Tags Tuesday February 5, 2008 - 10:58am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Special Events
- We got new neighbors in 1960 - Tom Wagner sold a piece of his land across the road along the river to one of his daughters and her husband, Lois & Gordon Nail. I didn't know at the time how important this was to me. (I first met Gordon a year or two before when I acted as his fishing guide - my pay was a lure that I still own - but I first heard of him when he noticed the bullet hole in Tom's mailbox and I lost the use of the .22 for a year despite my argument that I had done the deed a few years earlier when I was younger and stupider. Needless to say, I didn't like Gordon much until I got to know him.)
In 1962, Uncle Paul Streit moved back to Kalispell and moved in with Grandma & Bill. He had spent the last ten years in Warm Springs, suffering from schizophrenia. I don't know what triggered it in him but do know that his best friend was killed in a car wreck. The accident happened in the little dip in the highway just north of Columbia heights, his friend was driving, I guess Paul was in the back seat with his girlfriend and when the car went off the road he grabbed her and they dropped to the floor. His friend was killed and they were hurt, but not too badly.
(Related story - I believe it was Uncle Bus that was driving down Buck Weaver's lane after having a few too many drinks. The lane was lined with trees, and Bus said "Watch me hit that tree!" and proceeded to do just that. Mary Riedel was with him and got a broken collar bone out of the deal.)
I think Donal Grant retired about 1960 too, though he worked as a carpenter and did general stuff for some time afterward - Mom had him tear out the partition between the front porch and the living room and do some other work. He was also my instructor for hunter's safety class when I was still in grade school.
Over the next few years Paul, Donal & Gordon became my surrogate fathers. Dad was so involved with the Ridenour Brothers enterprises that he didn't really have time or inclination to do much with me so they stepped in. I am not sure how they put up with me, but they did, and I am grateful.
Donal started taking me fishing and huckleberrying and hunting whenever he went. I have a lot of great memories of time with him and I will share some of those stories in a bit.
Paul got into hunting and fishing in a big way after he came home, and I started tagging along with him whenever I could. (I envied his 1962 Olds F-85 and his Winchester Model 70 Featherweight .308 rifle!)
Dad did buy me my first rifle - a Winchester Model 94 .30-30 he found on sale in Spokane when he was delivering hogs there. (This was in the good old days before the Feds made buying guns in other states illegal.). I shot my first deer with it hunting with Paul, my second with Gordon, my third was probably with Donal. My daughter shot her first deer with that rifle too.
You WILL be hearing more about Donal & Gordon & Paul & Lois too.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Monday February 4, 2008 - 04:27pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Patriotism
- In grade school, we said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, and I remember how we stumbled over the new wording when it was modified.
"Eisenhower was instrumental in the addition of the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and the 1956 adoption of "In God We Trust" as the motto of the US, and its 1957 introduction on paper currency."
Two of us were assigned to raise the flag each morning and lower and fold it each night, and to do so with some degree of reverence.
Almost every one of us had a parent or relative who fought in WWII and all of them were members of Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" who had survived the Depression and the war years. They drilled into us a feeling that we owed our country and not the other way around. Pictures of great presidents and patriotic scenes decorated the school and playing war games was certainly not disocuraged.
Dad, Darel & Uncle Paul were all veterans. Dad was on the LCI-624, which was written up the book "Mosquito Fleet" after a close call with a torpedo that scrped the length of the hull and did not explode. Darel was on the Battleship USS Iowa, BB-61, Paul was an Air Force mechanic stationed in England.
This background made military duty pretty much a certainty in my future, but nowadays society treats patriotism like it was able mental illness. Sad...Tags: | Edit Tags Monday February 4, 2008 - 01:13pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 1 Comment - WHINE!
- I hate the editors Yahoo supplies for this blog.
The better one lets you add image links and generally has more power but no one can comment unless they register with 360, the lesser one randomly inserts six carriage returns, the number six, a plus sign and another carriage return when you hit backspace.
Both, as you try to post an entry, will randomly ask you for a password, which then erases everything you just wrote.
NEITHER OF THEM ALLOWS YOU TO EDIT PREVIOUS POSTS PROPERLY!!!! They fail to save the corrected posts.
My point is, that if there is a typo or a misspelled word in the blog, it is gonna stay there. These HOM posts are going into a WP document as a permanent record and the doc is correctable.
(If I try to compose in the word processor and then paste the text into the blog, BOTH editors treat the text as an image and crash.)Tags: | Edit Tags Monday February 4, 2008 - 12:08pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comment
- Thank you
- . . . for your patience. I have been having a lot of fun on this jaunt down memory lane that is being posted under the HOM (History Of Me) titles. I am saving it as it proceeds in a word processor document and I see that it is up over 38 pages now. I hope some of the three of you that read this still enjoy my maunderings.
The interspersions of comics is as much for me as you - humor is one of the most important ingredients of life. Humor refreshes the spirit, and that might be why I try to keep the HOM pretty light.
Once the memory bag has been emptied into this blog, I may try editing the resulting document - then again, it may be like sorting out the contents of a vacuum cleaner bag - not worth doing.
Enjoy, if you will!Tags: | Edit Tags Sunday February 3, 2008 - 12:49pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Brainless Again
- Tags: | Edit Tags Sunday February 3, 2008 - 08:46am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
- HOM: Wood Be Tough Sledding
- My first sled was a hand-me-down, probably an antique, and was a casualty of dual-use. Firewood got from the stack to the basement via muscle power and the stereotypical Little Red Wagon or a wheelbarrow when the ground was bare and on sleds when it was snowy. The old sled's wood frame finally gave out under a load of wood & Darrel welded a new frame out of pipe. It was stout enough then for heavy hauling, but not so good for play because the rigid frame meant you couldn't steer it. (I think my original LRW gave up the ghost hauling wood too.)
My Christmas present that year was a new Flexible Flyer - the king of sleds! It is still, unless dad gave it away, stored in the rafters in the old garage. It was the five foot model, made for a growing boy and big loads, and was a joy to use.
Riding it on the end of a 50 foot rope behind a tractor was a blast. You could go up into the fields or in the ditches and dodge bushes quite handily as long as you were careful to stay on the same side of sturdy trunks as the tractor - failing to pay attention meant you would do a face plant in the snow while the sled kept right on going until dad looked back and saw I was gone.
(Dad tried skiing behind the pickup with Mom driving once, but an error in commincation brought that to an end - Mom thought he was motioning and yelling at her to go faster when actually he was screaming for her to take the emergency brake off.)
When I left home the folks converted to oil heat - I suspected it was the result of Adult Conspiracy and lack of free labor, but it may have just been Mom's age.
Hauling wood on anything was not one of my favorite chores, and I would always overload the sled or wagon so I would be making as few trips as possible - a self-defeating proposition in most cases. I would all-too-often have a lot of the wood spill off and have to reload it, and when that happened I used a lot of the vocabulary I picked up around the farm.
(Related story - one of the neighbors got a flat tire on the way home with his kids and had troubling changing it. When he finally got home, the kids went in the house and their mom asked them what their dad had been doing. They said that he had been kicking the car and yelling "You run in the ditch" at it.)
I had the adult vocabulary down pat from Dad & Darrel and Bill and the other grown-ups before I hit my teens but I was usually pretty cautious using it. I goofed once when I spilled a wheelbarrow load of wood and I was expressing myself loudly in adult terms. Dad walked up behind me and in a very gentle voice asked if I would like some help. I said "Sure!", and he cut loose at full volume, telling me the he would "Help you with a foot up your a** if I catch you doling any more of that G**-D***** swearing!!" I took that lesson to heart - ansd learned to swear under my breath...
Farming was really good for developing both vocabulary and lung power!
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Friday February 1, 2008 - 03:17pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Brain Lapse - Humor Time
- Tags: | Edit Tags Friday February 1, 2008 - 11:25am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
- HOM: Mischief
-
Study hall was in a big corner room on the top floor.
The desks were the antique style pictured above, complete with ink wells and fastened together in complete rows with the flat desk portion attached to the seat back of the desk in front. The desks sat on wooden rails and entire rows would move as units
Most of the rows ran east & west with the kids facing east and the teacher sitting on a platform along the west wall behind them. There were two wide hallways intersecting in the room, one coming in from the east and one from the south, and the short rows of seats between them ran north and south with the occupants facing north.
I liked being in these odd rows - I was able to keep an eye on the teacher as easily as she could keep an eye on me.
Jim Smith, a big farm kid, sat in the row behind me one year, and for a joke I tied a wire between the rows of desks. When Jim came up and hit the wire all that happened was that the two rows of desks were pulled togther and the wire broke - he didn't even slow down.
I got a bright idea from a magazine ad - probably for a Johnson-Smith product - and got a short piece of garden hose and threaded a rubber band through it, then took a shotgun shell apart for the pellets. I was able to cup the hose in my left hand, put a pellet in the band, pull the band back with my right hand, and shoot the pellets the length of the room. It was pretty unobtrusive - I could hold the left hand cupped on my desk and even keep a pen in my right hand while I was firing so I never did get caught. The teacher used to hold up a newspaper and read or else lean back and watch the room, and I could usually hit the newspaper or the big calendar she had hanging behind her desk and make her jump with almost every shot. Stupid of me?? Very!!!!!!
One year I was near the front of one of the regular rows and had a good view down the hall. A girl I didn't like left and went down the hall wearing a very tight skirt. I yielded to temptation and fired off a small fence staple at her. The staple rotated and hit her in the butt points first and stuck. She went straight up and then came down cussing. I had about as puzzled an expression as everyone else did, but mine was fake...
That was the same year one of the school jocks walked down the row and someone (not me!) tried to trip him.He stopped, grabbed the kid by the hair and slammed his face down on the desk, then walked off. Typical for those days. Oh - the jock teaches at the high school now...
I tried shooting a bobby pin at the teacher once, but it flew in an arc, hit a light fixture, and landed on a kid's desk. He picked it up and was looking around, so the teacher busted him for doing it and sent him off to the office. I cooled the mischief for a while then.
(This is an addenda to the previous post - I forgot to put it back in after the editor crashed last time).
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Thursday January 31, 2008 - 04:17pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: HS BS
- Lloyd Wilson was my drafting teacher in the shop building across from the main school, and the most memorable event in his class was the day he left the room and went into the main shop for a moment. A snowball fight broke out that only lasted a minute or so, but the last ball thrown hit the shop door at nose level a second before Wilson walked back through it. If he saw the snow he ignored it, but if he had been hit I think it would have been a different story.
Another snowball memory - on the school bus - I slipped a handful of snow down Sherry Seney's collar when she wasn't looking. She thought the boy ahead of her had done it so when she dug it out she threw it at him, missed, and hit Mr. Pritchett, the driver, in the back of the head. He skidded the bus to a stop and nearly made all of us get out and walk before Sherry admitted she had thrown the snow. The original culprit kept his mouth shut - till now.
A possibly apocryphal story involved some kids in a previous class who waited until a very icy day and a sharp curve and then threw their weight to one side of the bus, making it slide into the ditch. My Cousins may have been involved in this...
Speaking of cousins, Dave Ballenger got a hotrodded Oldsmobile and gave my cousin Pat a ride in it that gave him more thrills than he appreciated, but Pat got his revenge after he got his pilot's license and gave Dave a close-up high-speed view of a chimney at the bottom point of a power dive. (Pat went on to a career as a pilot for Weyerhauser jockeying corporate jets around the globe.)
Back to school - one of my most embarrassing moments involved ice. I left the first period home room (Mr. Narum, in the music room) and when I went out the door I slipped and fell - and split my pants from knee to knee. I ended up repairing them in the bathroom with the wire from a spiral notebook, but the results were both obvious and painful.
(Probably the MOST embarrassing moment was the result of my crappy penmanship and a student teacher. She was calling out names and handing back corrected papers, but when she mistook the "n" for an "r" in my name on my paper I wouldn't claim it - but everyone in the class who WASN"T laughing too hard pointed me out to her. Her face was probably redder than mine.)
The problem with playing pranks on teachers was that they tended to punish the whole class, kind of like boot camp. Things still happened though, and the better teachers did not make a big deal of high spirited jinks like locking them out of the classroom for a few minutes.
I do remember one major prank from our senior year, but not the outcome. We had an assembly in the gym and at the end kids started hauling out eggs and tomatoes and such and throwing them. After a few teachers got smacked the fun ended.
Back in Mr. Johnson's chemistry class, there were a few kids who were afraid of the Bunsen burners so once in a while a classmate would give them an exploding match to use. It was kind of fun to watch the victim scream and dive when the match popped.
(Hodgson flashback: At Easter, we would exchange names and make Easter eggs for each other, and then hide them outside. Some kids made a point of adding one well-decorated but raw egg to the batch.)
Since this is the !THIRD! time I had to do this post, I am tired of typing.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Thursday January 31, 2008 - 03:24pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - The TSA has a blog
- This is stolen straight from BoingBoing, worth reading!!!
--------------The TSA has a blog
Our favorite federal administration, the TSA, has just launched a blog, called Evolution of Security. It kicks off with a cheerful message from Kip Hawley.I applaud his reason for launching the blog:
One of my major goals of 2008 is to get TSA and passengers back on the same side, working together. We need your help to get the checkpoint to be a better environment for us to do our security job and for you to get through quickly and onto your flight. Seems like the way to get that going is for us to open up and hear your feedback...
The 270 comments following Hawley's introductory post contain a mix of congratulatory messages (most of these are from proud TSA employees), accounts of bad experiences with the TSA, general and specific questions, and suggestions for improvement.
Here's a typical comment from a citizen:
DHS and TSA are fundamentally broken. Disband both immediately and return our civil liberties. Thank goodness Richard Reid did not conceal something in his underpants or these people would be strip-searching every poor grandma from here to Branson. Would someone please explain to these people that putting shoes through an x-ray does not mean they don't contain an explosive? And honestly-- Refusing a valid ID because it is "expired"? Confiscating deodorant and sun block? Does anyone believe that this kabuki security theater really makes us safer? If you guys are serious about your responsibility to protect the country I suggest you start by (1) not cutting off "TSA approved" locks anymore (2) learning and sticking to your own rules and regs especially those pertaining to passengers with medical problems (3) not trying to intimidate anyone who asks for a complaint form and (4) immediately crack down on the threatening screeners who shout "do you want to fly today?" anytime their crazy made-up-on-the-spot orders are questioned by passengers--who in my opinion often know the rules better than the screeners themselves. Oh and by the way your first amendment rights to free speech don't stop when you enter an airport screening area, even at MKE.
Another citizen:
Traveling through Chicago I set off the metal detactor. I'm an almost 60 year female. I stopped dead in my tracts, afraid of what I had done. The TSA lady (??) barked at me worse way than how I talk to my large dog. All she kept yelling at me was, "BACK!" I'm not that used to traveling and didn't know what she meant. Why cannot you not talk to us as if we are 'people'? You say that you yourselves are people...I doubt that!
And here's a typical comment from a TSA employee:
As a LTSO I have very proud to work for TSA. I understand that some of the passengers do not like taking off their shoes or surrendering their toothpaste, however, there are many passengers that thank us for what we do. We must all remember that 9/11 happened and we are just trying to make the air safe for everyone. Flying is not a right granted under the Bill of Rights and due to the state of the world today, we must all make smart decisions. I am proud of what we do and what we represent. Thank you Mr. Hawley!!
The comments make for entertaining reading, but I'm skeptical that any positive changes to TSA policies will be made as a result. LinkTags: | Edit Tags Thursday January 31, 2008 - 12:20pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Teachers: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
- They were the best and worst of times & teachers. These are the ones that stood out.
Best liked - funny, articulate, fair, interesting and good at what they did.
Richard Chapman, Sophomore year, English.
Bruce Johnson, Senior year, Chemistry.
George Cussen, Junior year, English, ditto.
Jim Corbett, Senior year, Economics.
LLoyd Wilson, Junior year, Drafting.
Least liked - for varying reasons.
Neal hart; biology, T. R. Richardson; social studies, Richard Nelson; physics.
Most unforgettable? Russ Ritter, Advanced Biology. Big & ex-Marine, and the first day of class he walked in, told us - loudly - to sit down and shut up, then requested a show of hands from any people who thought he "couldn't grab them by the buns and heave them out the door". He was a good teacher and had absolutely NO discipline problems.
(Flashback: Christmas at Mom's a couple of years ago, and Dad was reading a magazine when all of a sudden he asked "Do you know what an Odocoilus Virginianus is?" I just smiled and said "Yes". After a double take, he said "Okay, name it then!" "Whitetail deer." His reaction was "well, I'll be damned - how did you know that?" When I said it stuck from HS Biology class, he was surprised. Let's just say that Ritter had a way of making you remember things...)
That Biology class was fun - we had to have class projects and Ritter allowed me to use one I had been working on before - a map of Ashley Creek from the mouth up through Streit's farm annotated with notes on birds I had seen there over the years. I liked bird identification, and specialized in the "Audabon Method", shoot them and then identify them. (Members of the Audabon Society don't usually publicize the fact that shotgun & paintbrush was the method old J.J. used.) IIRC, I got an "A" on that project.
Chapman was a WWII vet and had a great sense of humor & great anecdotes. One day when he was lecturing & I was bored I started fiddling with a model airplane engine I had traded for. When he noticed, all he said was "Handcock, if that starts buzzing around the room, you are in trouble." I put it up.
Once when someone was whispering, Chapman whirled away from the blackboard where he was writing, let fly with the piece of chalk he had in his hand, and scored a mid-forehead hit on the whisperer. Silence ensued.
In later years he was a favorite customer of mine here in the store.
Bruce Johnson. There were some memorable moments in his class. There was the day someone threw a live snake through the window. It wrapped around a girl's neck when it hit, she screamed, grabbed it, and threw it while going over backwards in her chair. The snake landed on another girls desk which caused her to freak and that desk to go over and the whole room sort of went into motion. Unflappable Doc Johnson just sighed, walked over, picked up the snake and dropped it back out the window and resumed his lecture.
He grew a beard that year for the Montana Territorial Centennial and was told he looked like a cross between an ion and a polar bear.
I remember we used putty for some kind of an experiment. Dan H. & I started tossing it up to the ceiling and catching it again while Johnson was out of the room - and one of us threw it too hard & it stuck to that old fashioned high ceiling. We got it back down before he was back, but it was a major project.
Once Dr. Johnson gave us each a sealed box and asked us to determine without opening it what it contained by weighing, measuring and manipulating the box. The box I got was about 2"x3"x10". I determined that whatever was in the box was cylindrical (it rolled), had a protrusion (it wobbled), was light, and roughly 1/2" smaller than the small dimensions of the box. Then I tried to determine the material the object was made of. It wasn't magnetic, so I tried tapping the box to hear how the object resonated. After I tapped it a few times, the object no longer rolled, but slid with a rustling sound and the last resonation I heard was a "Crash-tinkle-tinkle". I concluded that the box did hold a glass beaker when it was handed to me and broken glass when I turned it back in. I got an "A" along with a semi-humorous-sarcastic note about "destructive testing".
He was mixing chemicals once at his desk when there was a muffled "POP" and a cloud of white smoke. All he said was "Well, it wasn't supposed to do that!"
A couple of other teachers, nameless now, decided to add to their income by printing $100 bills. The bills were pretty good quality, but they got caught passing them in Las Vegas - same serial numbers...
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Wednesday January 30, 2008 - 02:22pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - More Plagiarism.
- But I LOVE this strip! (mostly)
Tags: | Edit Tags Tuesday January 29, 2008 - 04:58pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - FYI: Watches & Bells
-
Eight Bells
Aboard Navy ships, bells are struck to designate the hours of being on watch. Each watch is four hours in length. One bell is struck after the first half-hour has passed, two bells after one hour has passed, three bells after an hour and a half, four bells after two hours, and so forth up to eight bells are struck at the completion of the four hours. Completing a watch with no incidents to report was "Eight bells and all is well."The practice of using bells stems from the days of the sailing ships. Sailors couldn't afford to have their own time pieces and relied on the ship's bells to tell time. The ship's boy kept time by using a half-hour glass. Each time the sand ran out, he would turn the glass over and ring the appropriate number of bells.
Watches
Traditionally, a 24-hour day is divided into seven watches.
These are: midnight to 4 a.m. [0000-0400], the mid-watch;
4 to 8 a.m. [0400-0800], morning watch;
8 a.m. to noon [0800-1200], forenoon watch;
noon to 4 p.m. [1200-1600], afternoon watch;
4 to 6 p.m. [1600-1800] first dog watch;
6 to 8 p.m. [1800-2000], second dog watch;
8 p.m. to midnight [2000-2400], evening watch.
(Dog watches run from 1600 to 1800 and from 1800 to 2000. This alternates the daily watch routine so Sailors on the mid-watch would not have it the second night, and, the split also gives each watchstander the opportunity to eat the evening meal.)Tags: | Edit Tags Tuesday January 29, 2008 - 11:46am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: LOST! Fights Too!
- This is going to be highly non-linear. These high school years were a hodgepodge to live through and are a hodgepodge to remember.
"LOST" pretty much describes me in my transition to high school in the fall of 1960. Going from one room with one teacher, and in a class of one to a hundred room, 1000+ student school with 300+ classmates was wrenching and I spent a lot of time locating classrooms and then trying to figure the fastest route between them.
I had more or less worked through my "total misfit" stage in grade school, but FCHS put me back in that mode again and making new friends was hard.
School work wasn't too bad, I worked hard, and I was pretty proud of the first report card, one C and the rest B's, but when I showed it to Dad he said he had expected me to do a lot better and was disappointed. I kind of quit caring after that - the rest of the high school years were mostly C's and a few B's and doing just enough work to get by. Bad attitude on my part!
The school had trouble classifying me, too. 1/2 my freshman year in honors English with low grades, 1/2 in standard English with high grades; sophomore year, honors English; junior year, standard English; senior year, honors again. The other classes didn't really differentiate between levels of ability.
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Fights. Pretty common in those days. The teachers would cheer us on rather than call the police & counselors, and the fights did tend to settle things. With a few exceptions they cleared the air between the combatants and led to peace.
I was not and am not athletic and being a misfit I ended up getting bullied by a few jerks. (And yes, I can understand the kids that break under bullying and blow away the bullies - any kid who has been on the receiving end of bullying can.)
What really sealed my fate was getting into a fight after school that first Fall - one kid kept tormenting me in gym class until I accepted his challenge. There were a few things wrong with that scenario - I had never been in a boxing match in my life and he was a fighter, and that concussion still affected me. When he hit me, it felt like my head was exploding and it didn't stop hurting for days. He got a black eye, but I lost.
After that I would not fight, and it really made me fair game for the next couple of years until the concussive aftereffects went away & I figured out that the only way to stop getting hit was to hit back. One effect those episodes had on me was that I accepted the brand of coward. Not a great help for self image.
I guess I threw my next punch when I was a junior - a big fat kid kept shoving me in the hall and stepping on my heels till my shoes would pull off. One day I swung around and punched him in the belly and he stopped doing that. Then later on a kid knocked my books out of my hands and we ended up out in the alley. I won that one, but I still felt like a coward.
(Memorable fights of classmates - Harvey was being picked on & hit by a bigger kid and he picked up a board and laid the kid out. The next afternoon was like a chase scene from a "B" movie - Harvey hit the bus steps at a dead run with a dozen or so kids after him - friends of the kid he had clobbered. I guess it wasn't fair to use a club, but but it was okay to gang up on someone.
The second - Louie & Bob got in a fight and Louie went berserker. Bob ended up in the hospital and Louie in an institution for a bit.
Then there were Mike & Alden - they started fighting in grade school and kept it up periodically all through high school. I guess it was finally a draw. Alden ended up at M.I.T. and Mike stayed here)
We had a few teachers that were pretty free with their fists too. I got slapped once by Neal hart for asking a kid in a neighboring seat for a pencil, and the neighbor got slapped too. My fault, I guess. Hart bit off more than he could chew once and ended up getting knocked on his kiester by a student. The student had to switch schools, but Hart kept his hands to himself after that.
The school doors were locked during lunch hour so kids that went outside had to wait for them to be reopened before they could come back in. Once in a while a kid would manage to sneak in and open the doors for others - the doors had push bars so they could be opened from the inside.
One day Gary, a friend of mine, was inside and I was trying to get him to open the door for me, but he just leaned on it and grinned at me. He was still grinning when teacher Mr. Ylinen walked up behind him, planted a foot in his butt and sent him out the door headfirst. I thought it was funnier than Gary did
A different Gary and some friends got into trouble when we were seniors - the old cannon that sits at Woodland park was on an island in the middle of Main Street in those days, near the courthouse and the old WWI Doughboy statue. Late one night they stopped by the old cannon and tossed a jug with four pounds of black powder and a long fuse down the barrel and took off. When the powder went off it blew all the accumulated crud and junk out of the barrel, broke a couple of windows and damaged a sign.
Another kid who had been with them earlier ratted on them when he got busted for possession. The cops gathered them all up and scared them thoroughly, but since no one was hurt or much damage done they let them off, but afterwards the city filled the barrel of the old cannon with concrete so nobody could repeat the episode.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Tuesday January 29, 2008 - 10:55am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Okay, I Admit It!
- I'm addicted!
Tags: | Edit Tags Sunday January 27, 2008 - 08:35pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Best of Best
- So far, anyway....
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Can't Comment! (I take email, though!)
(Me) (Home)Tags: | Edit Tags Sunday January 27, 2008 - 08:19pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Picks!
- Tags: | Edit Tags Sunday January 27, 2008 - 10:38am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
- HOM: Solitary Games & Other Events!
- Playtime!
Indoors, it was books or games or maybe television.
I would play war games with an old set of Chinese checkers. I used to take the little bowling-pin-shaped wooden "men" and stand them up in two opposing groups, then move back and forth bombarding them with a "cannon" that consisted of marbles rolled down through extension tubes from Mom's old Kirby vacuum cleaner till all of one one group was knocked down. When I had actual toy soldiers later on I did the same thing, Axis versus Allies.
I played cards against imaginary opponents using Mom's old Pinochle chips and making up rules as I went.
I'd arrange furniture & blankets to make hideouts or tents and play cowboys & Indians and adventure games. In the summers I built hideouts in the hay shed or in the bushes that lined the fields then. (The bushes are gone now, the price of progress. Dad didn't like having nonproductive land so he ripped them out. He also cut down an old elm tree that grew in the front yard and was a favorite play-spot of mine - even after I slipped and ended up hanging head down with my foot caught in a fork and had to be rescued.)
After Dad gave me an old Zenith console radio that had shortwave bands I got pretty hooked on listening for and to foreign stations, a hobby I still pursue though now I use a tiny "black box" radio hooked to my computer.
I played a lot with toy guns, a favorite being a cheap cap pistol called a "Trooper" by Hubley. (In a fit of nostalgia I bought one of them off Ebay a few years ago.)
Cap guns never lasted long - the caps were very corrosive and a summer's use wore them out internally. I never did own a cap rifle, I got by with BB guns or wooden guns or Ian's old single-shot shotgun, which functioned quite well as a single-shot cap gun; Cock it, stick a cap under the hammer and pull the trigger. BANG! Dig old cap out, repeat process.
I usually stayed out of trouble playing war games, but really did an oopsy once. I found this rock that worked fine size and shape wise as a grenade, and once when I was fighting "Japs" who periodically hid in the garage I would sneak up to the garage door and do a Sgt. Rock imitation, lofting the grenade blindly in. "Blindly" was the operative word that got me in trouble - I didn't know Dad had backed his car into the garage while I was playing elsewhere & I put the rock through the windshield.
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Related Flashbacks: Once Mom hopped in the car in a hurry when it was parked in front of the house and hit reverse - without seeing the tractor Dad had parked behind the car. He went somewhat ballistic over that episode & told Mom he was going to put sights on the hood so she aim the car since she obviously couldn't steer it - the same thing Jimmy Weaver told his wide Jean when she ran into the loaded haywagon parked in the middle of their driveway. (Jim had little room to talk - the road south of his house ran on a grade through the middle of a swampy slough nad he managed to put his car over the edge into the water once when he had spent a bit too much time visiting at Del's Bar. Henceforth that Slough was called "Jimmy's Car Wash".)
Years later, Dad hopped into his VW station wagon and backed it up in an arc - directly into the rear of Becky's station wagon. He felt so bad that no one gave him a bad time about it.
Mom had two other car accidents over the years - when I was in grade school we were coming home from town and were turning off at Four Corners just as Edith Grant was pulling on to the highway. Mom waved at Edith and when she did the car slid in the gravel and went into the ditch. No damage and no injuries but Mom was pretty shook up so some guy that stopped drove the car back onto the road for her. I thought it was kind of exciting! Her last accident occurred in front of the High School - she was driving the International and when she was pulling out of a parking space a car swiped the edge of the front bumper. It hurt the car worse than it did the truck - that truck built like a tank! When dad had it parked in the old barn, a beam about 8" through rotted off and fell on the hood - and dented the hood ornament! A modern truck would have been severely damaged.
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Anyway - back to playtime.
Wintertime was fun back in those days. Dad used to take the tractor and built me a packed sledding area in the draw north of the hog pens for solitary sliding and would sometimes hook my sled on a rope behind the pickup or tractor and pull me down the road or through the fields a criminal act these days, but common practice then.
When the frozen ponds formed in the fields as I mentioned earlier, I would gio out on the ice with my sled and a ski pole and push myself along or hold a small piece of plywood that worked as a sail if the wind was strong. When one of those ponds formed in the draw below my sled track I really had a lot of fun with long-distance sliding.
When the slough froze, I took the sled down there and then skated there when I got older. Once in a while I took a dog along. i would skate down a ways, then have someone (Mom!) call him, then he would give me a wild ride back.
Summertime, I liked to fish in the slough for bass with Mom or Aunt Minnie. We used to borrow Riedel's old wood rowboat until later on when Dad bought a used 13' aluminum boat and a 5-hp motor. I remember one hot summer day we got a mess of bass. We were using Minnie's car and when we got home we were missing a fish! Minnie found it a couple of days later under the seat - in hot weather!
Another Minnie memory - we were landing the boat at the corner where Jellars live now. I hopped out and just as I pulled the bow up onto the bank Minnie stood up. She went over backwards and landed on Mom's legs. Mom yelled at her to get up because it hurt her legs but Minnie was laughing too hard. When she got her breath all she could say was "I can't move - I peed my pants!" Mom was pissed....
I used to play bicycle polo using an old bat and whatever ball could find. The driveway had a loop in it then (Gone now because Dad built grain bins & blocked it) and I used to go round and round there hitting the ball. I tried it once when the seat of my bike had broken and been removed, leaving the empty post. I didn't think it would matter as I usually was standing & pedalling, but when I forgot and dropped down it was kinda, um, disgruntling.
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Since this is very much stream-of-thought-triggered-by-unrelated-memories, let me jump over to the Weaver family for a bit.
Buck was Jimmy's father, Carol's grandfather, and a friend of Ian's. Jimmy was a friend of Uncle Paul's.
Jimmy rode a motorcycle and Paul said that no matter how late Jimmy left his house he was never late for school so Paul liked riding with him. He said that if you saw a cloud of dust in the distance and it was Jimmy on the bike, you would not have time to cross the road before he went past. Jimmy had a reputation as a tough kid, one who liked to fight and seldom lost, and this was in the day when fights didn't end till one person couldn't get back up after the last punch or kick.
I suspect that Buck was pretty tough too, but he was in his 70's when I knew him. I know he was an excellent mechanic who pushed his vehicles pretty hard - I saw him go nearly airborne crossing a ditch to get into our field.
Buck gave me my first pay. The neighbors all hayed together and we kids were unpaid family labor, but one teenage summer I asked Buck if he would pay me. He asked me what pay I expected and I told him to pay me whatever he felt I was worth. I ended up getting the same pay as the grown-up hired hands and more than the other teen-agers who worked for him and I am still proud of that.
It was in front of Buck that I had my last major disagreement with Dad, when I was 18. It was haying season and we were all over at Buck's, and it was one of those days that every time I opened my mouth to anyone about anything Dad interrupted & corrected me. I finally shot my mouth off when Buck asked me a question and I just pointed at Dad and said "Ask him, he knows everything!" Big mistake, and when we were alone Dad let me know exactly what he thought of me and it was pretty bad. When we got home, I got in the car and just drove for hours mad and hurt. When I finally returned everything was calm like nothing had happened but I think Mom had finally blown up at him because he never spoke to me like that again.
Dad, by the way, liked Buck but didn't care much for Jimmy Weaver and always said he'd "lie when the truth would sound better". I liked Jimmy and in later years loved hunting on his place and keeping his supply of pigeons whittled down.
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I am starting to lap into the high school years so I guess I better work on getting the Hodgson years wrapped up.
The April Fool's joke that backfired - I waited till bedtime, then went out into the kitchen, looked out the window and yelled "The chicken house is on fire!" The resiults weren't as funny as I expected them to be.
Puttiung an egg into Bill's cap so that when he plopped it on the egg broke - which was not as bad as the O'Connell kids who put the snake in Bill's hat! Poor Bill was such a wonderful guy and so much fun that he probably ended up getting more than his share of abuse.
Bill introduced us kids to Spoonerisms and we had a lot of fun with them. (Some of the more famous quotations attributed to Spooner include, "The Lord is a shoving leopard," (instead of "The Lord is a loving shepherd"), "It is kisstomary to cuss the bride," ("It is customary to kiss the bride") and, "Mardon me, padam, this pie is occupewed. Can I sew you to another sheet?" (Pardon me, madam, this pew is occupied. Can I show you to another seat?") Bill loved repeating what was said to him but with letters shifted around - "Start the car" became "Cart the Star", etc, but this backfired on him a time or two - like the time Benny Louden called him "Still Breit" or the time Rudy asked him if he wanted a "bit a sugar".
Okay - too much typing, too much history, time to go rerad a book.
TBC.Tags: | Edit Tags Saturday January 26, 2008 - 04:48pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: LOST! Fights Too!
- This is going to be highly non-linear. These high school years were a hodgepodge to live through and are a hodgepodge to remember.
"LOST" pretty much describes me in my transition to high school in the fall of 1960. Going from one room with one teacher, and in a class of one to a hundred room, 1000+ student school with 300+ classmates was wrenching and I spent a lot of time locating classrooms and then trying to figure the fastest route between them.
I had more or less worked through my "total misfit" stage in grade school, but FCHS put me back in that mode again and making new friends was hard.
School work wasn't too bad, I worked hard, and I was pretty proud of the first report card, one C and the rest B's, but when I showed it to Dad he said he had expected me to do a lot better and was disappointed. I kind of quit caring after that - the rest of the high school years were mostly C's and a few B's and doing just enough work to get by. Bad attitude on my part!
The school had trouble classifying me, too. 1/2 my freshman year in honors English with low grades, 1/2 in standard English with high grades; sophomore year, honors English; junior year, standard English; senior year, honors again. The other classes didn't really differentiate between levels of ability.
---------------
Fights. Pretty common in those days. The teachers would cheer us on rather than call the police & counselors, and the fights did tend to settle things. With a few exceptions they cleared the air between the combatants and led to peace.
I was not and am not athletic and being a misfit I ende
